It’s not easy being in ad sales these days. We bear the responsibility of generating the majority of revenue associated with our publication(s) but have almost no decision-making authority when it comes to the tools, technology and training we need to gain a competitive edge.  

I hear more and more media executives lament how their salespeople can’t sell digital or that they’re not using a consultative sales approach. There’s a remedy for this: Train your sales team to use web analytics platforms.

What’s the best jargon generator, Google Buzz or iPad?

Nobody actually knows what impact either of these technologies will have, but everybody still wants to say something about them. Here’s a totally unscientific sampling from a bunch of blogs highlighting the best jargon describing each of them.

If Google can’t make money off the news, who can? That’s the heart of a brilliant post by C.D. Nixon which says a bunch of things most journalists and many publishers can’t bear to admit. Nixon’s post  features a picture of a Google search for “Afghanistan war.”  

The most helpful productivity tools are the tools that have tools. This has become a lot more visible lately with "App Stores" popping up everywhere; however, the concept of extending an initial framework has been around for a while, often through third-party use of APIs.

My top two production tools are of this variety: frameworks that are impressive as standalone products and extremely helpful when augmented. (Disclosure: much of my equipment is Mac-based though many of the programs I work with are universally accessible).

Small media companies need flexible, cost-effective tools that can be ramped up quickly and with little technical expertise. Actually, large media companies want those things as well, but the enterprise requirements of companies with 50 or 100 publications put them in another league.

Here at eMedia Vitals, we run our business almost exclusively using "cloud-based applications". That's the fancy way of saying that the applications we use are on the Internet and we pay for them by the month.

Angel investor and serial entrepreneur David S. Rose asked the startups of the Incubator at Rose Tech Ventures, "Who owns a customer in today's world of Twitter, iTunes, Facebook and Google?" The debate that followed focused on the rise of APIs and marketplaces and their impact on business transactions. The conclusion? We are heading towards a world where no one owns a customer.