Diary of an Internet Marketing Junkie

For the past few months, the Huffington Post has been on a bit of a tear–both in terms of traffic gains and also in its hiring of some big talent for key positions. Now, those execs are focusing on using that consumer momentum to achieve what has eluded the Huffington Post thus far: Making some serious bank from the privately held news and media site. How to help marketers to better understand the site and, therefore, spur this significant monetization will be his main focus at the Huffingto

After a short period of near-mandatory private beta, Bellevue, WA-based BigDoor Media is today introducing the public beta of its website and mobile app monetization software solution.In addition, the upstart is announcing that it has raised early-stage funding ($250k) from Seattle’s Founder Co-op and a dozen angel investors, many of which are local Internet/tech CEOs.The whole idea behind BigDoor is that online monetization can be improved through technology, enabling publishers to get more mon

NEW YORK – AOL announced that Shashi Seth has joined the company as Senior Vice President of Global Advertising Products, responsible for building and scaling AOL’s advertising platform and developing industry-leading products. Seth comes to AOL from Cooliris, where he served as Chief Revenue Officer. Prior to that he was with Google, where he served most recently as head of monetization for YouTube. “Shashi is unmatched in the industry as an innovator with an outstanding track record of deve

BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm responsible for the monetization of the British broadcaster's international assets, has announced a 56.2 percent increase in digital ad sales for the year ending March 2009. According to BBCW's annual review, all areas of its digital business grew throughout the year, with BBC.com itself performing especially well. As a result, a total of £34.2 million was billed for the 2008/2009 period, up from £21.9 million for the previous 12 months. Other BBCW properties

Startup companies that offer free services to their users in the hope that an ad-based model will bring enough revenue should reconsider their monetization plans. The ad-model model takes too long to deliver revenue – building a network of users is a time-consuming business, and, in many cases, roulette (will the users click on the ads, or are they banner blind?). Although ads will always have a role in marketing (putting a brand in front of a customer), the declining success of ad-based camp