Back in the day, Ken Segall helped create Apple's Think Different campaign and helped name the iMac. More recently he worked on JC Penney's Yours Truly, commercial, before JCP ousted Ron Johnson as its CEO. He writes a sharp, entertaining blog called Ken Segall's Observatory, where he offers opinions on advertising and design geekery. His take on Ron Johnson's failure is interesting, as is this post on what it takes for an advertisement to stand out in a crowd. He calls attention to surprisingly decent ads from Microsoft and Dell, critiques terrible ads (from Microsoft and JC Penney and even Apple, and comments on whether skeuomorphism has its advantages. He's also fond of discussing product names. Give this one a skip if advertising gives you hives, but for those of you who're interested in things like this Segall's blog is especially choice stuff.
posted by Rory Marinich on May 3, 2013 - 26 comments

Maria Popova's Brain Pickings is a very popular blog with over 500,000 visitors to her website every month. "Brain Pickings provides the bulk of her income. She eschews ads on the site, but openly solicits donations..."* "But there’s something Ms. Popova doesn’t mention in her appeals to donors, amid her talk of operating 'ad-free.' She might not run banner ads, but she appears to earn income from affiliate links. You read a glowing review, you click through to order the book, and Ms. Popova gets a commission. The accusation comes from an anonymous Tumblr [update: he has now named himself as Tom Bleymaier]..."* [more inside]
posted by ericb on Feb 14, 2013 - 74 comments

Ultra Swank - Retro Living and Design from the 50s, 60s and 70s.
posted by unliteral on Dec 8, 2011 - 8 comments

Why Gawker Nick Denton is a genius - he can smell the page views!. The redesign he's championed (previously) is a convoluted nightmare which breaks the web and left blog posts unindexed Google. Page views are in the toilet. He may loose that bet. It doesn't matter, Nick Denton is a genius. Look, pictures of a naked man!
posted by Artw on Feb 16, 2011 - 148 comments

With it's new redesign Gawker, and it's affiliates, will be moving away from being blogs. They want to be like Television.
posted by Artw on Dec 1, 2010 - 63 comments

The Wall Street Journal's What They Know blog is charged with determining what information marketers are capable of learning about internet users through tracking technology. This weekend, they took aim at Facebook, after their investigation discovered that many popular apps on the social-networking site, including those by Zynga, have been transmitting identifying information in the form of User ID's to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, even if a user has enabled strict privacy settings. Additional analysis. Response post on Facebook's Developer Blog. Forbes' blogger Kashmir Hill asks if the WSJ is overreacting, and Techcrunch notes that the severity and risks of UID transferral are still being debated.
posted by zarq on Oct 18, 2010 - 56 comments

How To Save Media Jason Ponti from Technology Review offers some suggestions as to how traditional print publishers might save themselves from becoming irrelevant.
posted by reenum on Oct 12, 2009 - 30 comments

This Spring Swedish super-blogger Blondinbella aka Isabella Löwengrip is causing a huge controversy in Sweden. 17 year old Isabella Löwengrip writes Sweden's most read and most discussed blog, Blondinbella. (Here is number two FWIW.) Löwengrip started blogging to recruit members to the political party Moderaterna (what passes for right wing in Sweden) but she discovered readers were far more interested in reading about what she was wearing. [more inside]
posted by three blind mice on Jul 2, 2008 - 25 comments

Osocio is a blog that covers some of the best social marketing and non-profit advertising worldwide - whether it be through a careers fair, a "beauty" ad, or even through sex education.
posted by divabat on Dec 4, 2007 - 9 comments

Earn $10 from home! Simply write about McDonalds for your blog. [via Public Address]
posted by meech on Oct 15, 2006 - 47 comments

Water Cooler Games is a blog devoted to "video games with an agenda. It is about games that go beyond entertainment." They cover pretty much all you would expect from the recent furor over JFK Reloaded to Russian plans to create "patriotic video games in hopes to replace the popular DOOM".
Along the way they found time to play the single most unsafe for anywhere anyone might conceivably see what you were doing game - orgasm girl (link goes to the blog discussion, not directly to the game).
posted by thatwhichfalls on Nov 27, 2004 - 10 comments

Followup: Wired runs an article called "Fark Sells Out, France Surrenders". Drew Curtis writes a response (note the sycophantic totalfarkers and more annoyed normal-farkers) -- but, as the article says, "when pressed on the issue, Curtis refused to deny that Fark accepts payment for placement of links". Was this really a case of one sales rep getting "a little overenthusiastic"? Is Drew ever actually going to deny selling Fark out, or will he just keep writing non-responses detailing his plans for selling it out even more in the future?
posted by reklaw on Aug 6, 2004 - 43 comments

Pink Bunny’s LiveJournal Pink Bunny is a character in a film beginning principal photography this month, Crypto-Candida. If she isn’t real, how can her LiveJournal be?
posted by joeclark on Mar 4, 2003 - 2 comments

Jorn tries pay for play. Seeking to sell links near the top of his extremely-widely-read weblog Robot Wisdom, Jorn Barger has set an (experimental) $20 submission fee: you don't get considered if you don't pay, but if he approves of your site you get a link. (Actually, it's even more complicated than that, which is characteristic of the man.) There's even a $100 fee for certain commercial links. Jorn can do what he likes, of course, but how well do you think this might work?
posted by dhartung on Feb 13, 2001 - 42 comments

I have seen the future of advertising, and it is PP * blog. My ultra-top-secret advertising scheme is finally let out of the box. Okay, so it might not be the future of advertising, but it IS a sleezy scheme on my part to help get both me AND you more visibility in the weblog dept.
posted by premiumpolar on Mar 21, 2000 - 8 comments