Stories and ideas

  • My Daughter is not a princess

    My Daughter is not a princess

    So this last weekend my wife and I hosted a Burn’s Night dinner for a few of our friends.  It was great and we’re planning to make it an annual tradition.  My favorite part of the night was after dinner sitting in a circle drinking whiskey and having everyone recite their favorite poem (sometimes with…

  • A Close Look At Mobile Ad Fraud

    A Close Look At Mobile Ad Fraud

    I have a new article up on MediaPost looking at the various types of ad fraud in the mobile media space and how brands and their partners can combat them. Media quality remains a top challenge for digital marketers. With mobile ad spending accounting for 70.3% of total U.S. digital advertising spending, many of the techniques used…

  • Tying digital media and actions to in-store behaviors

    Tying digital media and actions to in-store behaviors

    Many brands struggle to prove ROI for their digital media spend. These 3 simple strategies can to tie real-world conversions to digital advertising. Unlike TV and Radio advertising, digital media offers the possibility of tracking individual ad views to purchases. Many brands have made this leap for their online and in-app purchases, but a much…

  • Thoughts on Trump’s election and California’s partisan divide

    Thoughts on Trump’s election and California’s partisan divide

    Like many Californians who grew up here, I have always considered myself a Californian more than an American.  In my 20’s I spent years travelling back and forth across the United States as part of various environmental and social justice campaigns and that feeling only deepened.  When outside the US I always tell people who…

  • There be Dragons!

    There be Dragons!

    My daughter took her first steps this week and my heart almost exploded.  Being a parent is something I was scared of for a long time but found myself wanting more and more.  I find it’s changed the way I think in all sorts of unexpected ways. – for example I suddenly spend a lot…

  • A Thanksgiving recipe

    A Thanksgiving recipe

    Start with one fresh-baked rant about the inherently imperialistic origins of the “thanksgiving” holiday. Add a bitter comment about what’s happening right now at Standing Rock under a Democratic president and what that says about how little progress America has made. Season with notes of despair and impotent rage at the recently concluded election (the…

  • None of the Above

    None of the Above

    Bernie Sanders was the first presidential candidate I’ve ever donated to or knocked on doors for and I am proud to say that the CNP platform takes the best of his ideas and expands on them.  Unfortunately, he’s out of the race. So am I Bernie or Bust?  No.  My refusal to vote for a…

  • A bag of Avocados

    A bag of Avocados

    I was working on an article on the US presidential elections for another website earlier today and made an offhand remark that if the Democrats nominated a bag of Avocados for the presidency that California would faithfully line up and vote for it.  And then it hit me – a bag of Avocados would actually be…

  • Deep links and Cross-platform targeting

    Two new posts up on corporate blogs for my job.  One is a product announcement on our new deeplinking solution: https://blog.po.st/announcing-smart-link The second is an explanation of how data from that tool is being used along with other data to power our new cross-platform and cross-device targeting technology: https://blog.radiumone.com/cross-device-and-cross-platform-targeting/ (Hopefully) interesting stuff if you work in…

  • PII, Analytics, and Advertising

    I’ve been thinking about privacy and the inherent conflict between the drive by advertisers to want to know more and the need to respect end users personal information.  I ended up writing two articles about it.  The first is up on the RadiumOne corporate blog and talks about threats to end user Personally Identifiable Information (PII) presented…

  • Home

    Vedika was tired and angry, but mostly tired. Anger was exhausting. Her husband’s father was infuriating even in the best of times – he belonged firmly to a generation that seemed stubbornly incapable of thinking of women as equals and seemed to regard her dedication to her career as a character flaw. The deafening silence…

  • Enough

    Jake sighed as he slumped against the steering wheel of his truck and moved back into the lane.  He had moved over to the side to let a motorcycle past because the truck filled the whole lane.  It had been years since he’d been on a bike, the girl who loved to ride on the…