Native Advertising Event

This Thursday from 1pm to 6pm, our portfolio company Zemanta is co-hosting a summit on native advertising here in NYC. 

I've written and spoken a fair bit about native advertising so regular readers will likely be quite familiar with this topic. However, from what I am seeing out there, native advertising is really hitting its stride as social platforms and mobile consumption become the norm. If you are a marketer or an entrepreneur working in the advertising/marketing space, you should be paying attention to this trend.

I will be kicking off the event at 1pm with a brief talk and some Q&A.

If you want to go, here is a link to get a 50% discount on the event for readers of AVC.

This is Internet Week in NYC and I am making a number of public appearances in addition to this native advertising summit. Here's the whole shebang:

Last night – introducing the Gotham Gal at the MOUSE 15 Annivesary Event

This morning – Opening the CMSummit with John Battelle at 9:10am

Wednesday evening – March For Innovation (immigration) event at AppNexus with Brian O'Kelly

Thursday mid-day – The Native Advertising event

Thursday at 4:30pm – OpenCo Festival event with John Battelle and Dave Morgan at Simulmedia

It's a busy week but with a Vespa scooter and a mind full of things to say, it shouldn't be too hard. I hope to see you all around town this week.

#NYC#VC & Technology

Comments (Archived):

  1. awaldstein

    Thanks.I might just be able to do part of this.To be clear. $147 is half price?

    1. fredwilson

      yes

    2. jason wright

      do i eat or do i buy a ticket? it’s a dilemma.

  2. reece

    don’t rush on our part, Fredi think i can safely say we all celebrate the internet every week

  3. Tom Labus

    This Spring has been great!Enjoy these days on your Vespa.

  4. leigh

    for the non new yorkers, is someone going to record so you can post it?

    1. fredwilson

      I don’t know but I hope so

    2. William Mougayar

      Best is to follow the twitter stream & some articles will be written.

    3. Greg Gortz

      Hey Leigh, we are looking into options for recording the event. Will post back here with an update. thx

  5. William Mougayar

    That’s 2 ties you had to wear in the space of a week almost!We’ll follow these events on Twitter & Business Insider reporting.

    1. awaldstein

      Toronto is just a hop from here William.And as the guardian and maven of dynamic interactions between the web and customers for your acquirer, I feel strongly that you need to come here and take me out to dinner at Rouge Tomate! I promise engaging conversations, some debates about native advertising and a quite astounding list of natural wines.

      1. William Mougayar

        Ha! I wished I could have done it, given some advance planning. I’ve got too many commitments this week already, unfortunately

        1. awaldstein

          Next time.I was hoping for your aptitude with French to lead the conversation with the sommelier, Pascaline Lepeltier, who is a true rock star and great to banter with about wine.

          1. panterosa,

            I pimped LocalSip to a sommelier at Bar Veloce, near to movies watering hole.

  6. pointsnfigures

    What do they charge for Vespa parking in NYC?

    1. JimHirshfield

      $112 if you park it in the wrong place.

      1. LE

        Back in the 70’s I remember my dad telling me that the reason for towing was that the ticket price was a bargain (for cars) vs. paying or trying to find parking.How about this: I propose a crowd sourced network of people who will meet you to take your car and circle the block (or park it somewhere illegally because they can easily move it) and save you the parking lot charge.Because of the high hourly cost of parking in any urban area (and the hassle and portal to portal cost) it seems like there would be an opportunity for people to make pocket cash even if just for a few hours between classes. When the car owner is ready, they simply signal “circlers” and get picked up. People are vetted, voted and validated etc.So circlers would keep active in certain areas waiting for cars which they can then car sit while someone is in a store or a meeting.

        1. ShanaC

          what about gas prices and wear on the car

          1. Ricardo Diz

            and additional traffic jam

          2. LE

            As they say in “bogie nights” that’s a “yp” not an “mp”. [1]Not finding the airbnb people worried about the impact on anyone’s neighbor’s peace and quiet etc.[1] (Your problem not my problem).

          3. LE

            Convenience trumps any cost like that. And the idea is typically not to idle but to turn the engine off and not to drive. Simply to tuck yourself into a space – similar to when a friend drives you and waits for you.When my ex wife was pregnant years ago and had to make it around Philly we hired some retired person to shuttle her around all day with her car. It worked out great very efficient (she sold ads and had to make a zillion stops) much easier than parking her own car.

        2. JimHirshfield

          Sounds like a great plan for stealing lots of cars.Barring that, tons of fender benders by city kids with no car insurance.But yeah, cool idea.

          1. LE

            When people get their cars valet parked it is often driven blocks away. Even some lots where you drop off the car take the car and park it somewhere else (check the odometer and you will see).The idea is to trust the network of people and vet them obviously. I don’t get the “great plan for stealing lots of cars” at all.Someone allowing a stranger to use their apartment seems to have much to lose as well but yet people have done that (much to my amazement I wouldn’t have thought that had much of a chance).People could specify the type and/or quality of driver they want to pay for and trust.I would never valet park my car but my wife’s car is a different story.

          2. BillMcNeely

            I checked parking lot access badges this week at the Byron Nelson Golf Tournament here in Dallas, TX this week. The rough handling the Valet service employee showed the high dollar cars in their was horrible. I would think twice about using valet when I can afford to have that type of car again.

  7. Vineeth Kariappa

    Please upload a pic of u n the vespa.

    1. pointsnfigures

      Tasteless trading floor joke: What do scooters and fat chicks have in common? Both are fun to ride until your friends see you.

      1. BillMcNeely

        Soldiers like that joke too. Evidently if your Fred or the CEO of Tumblr you can pull it off ok 🙂

        1. LE

          What are your thoughts on all the sex scandal stuff going on in the military right now?

          1. BillMcNeely

            Two thoughts.First, I think you are going to see an alignment of punishment of similar behavior by officers and enlisted folks. In the past enlisted folks paid more in fines, restriction, imprisonment less than a Good Conduct Discharge. Officer got off with maybe a cheesy fine, removal from command, a letter of reprimand, ( outside the military does not mean anything) permitted to finish their time and still got a Good Conduct Discharge. When they leave the military nobody knows otherwise of their misdeeds.My second though is pay attention to which services you are hearing from. It’s the Navy and the Air Force. Typically they don’t take crap and have less of an issue with letting outsiders know there was a problem and they are taking care of it.The Army and their commanders , for whatever reason does not take take these type of issue head on. They fail to recognize people are people and they do stupid stuff and its only your fault when you fail to correct or punish the wrong doing.At some point I think you are going to see a bigger, wider sex scandal blow up in the Army.

          2. LE

            My personal theory is that there is a correlation between the type of people who are willing to do dangerous and sometimes reckless things for their country and these actions and risk they take personally. I mean you have to be cut from a certain bolt of clothing to be willing to risk your life in the military. And in a sense actions like this, while they would never been condoned, might be a necessary evil to be dealt with on a symptomatic basis. Which is not to say “boys will be boys” as much as recognizing that the level of testosterone in some of these guys is probably more than in me. Plus the circumstances you are in and all of that.Take the secret service guys for example and the sex scandals there. These really are “men’s men” I mean it’s really no surprise that they would be also the type that would have those sexcapades is it?Lastly as it is well known with other things the punishment that someone could get is not as effective as it should be in preventing sexual misconduct. As only two examples look at what Clinton did and what Spitzer did. If restraint were that simple they would have done the calculus and nothing would have every happened.

        2. BillMcNeely

          When I was referring to Fred and David I was refering to being seen on a Vespa.

      2. Dumass

        That’s why I left wall st and all its bafoons, they are always making fun of scooters.

      3. Kirsten Lambertsen

        Somebody clearly hasn’t seen “La Dolce Vita.”And clearly I didn’t miss anything by never working on a trading floor.

      4. LE

        I’ve always found it ironic that in a country with free speech, there are cases where people have to watch what they say for fear of offending someone, but on the other hand you can write a book or make a movie that says anything and deal with all sorts of objectionable content that goes way beyond your joke. (Same with news media reporting things and with comedy. If you’ve ever seen “The aristocrats”[1] you know what I mean. ).Taking your joke, you’ve started it with “tasteless trading floor joke” which has removed you somewhat (like a writer) from the intention and content of the joke. [2] As if to say “hey someone said this personally I might find it offensive but…”[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/t…[2] Taking this a step further if you had a character that said that in a story you could say almost anything and nobody would take any issue with it at all.

        1. Kirsten Lambertsen

          I was just trying to be funny. I wasn’t trying to call anybody out. If I wanted to do that, I woulda Tweeted it ;-)Oh, and, I’m just looking for excuses to plaster that picture around.

  8. Chris Phenner

    Long-time follower / lover of The Native, looking forward to Thursday’s comments.And I represent a platform at UNIFIED that buys and (subsequently) tracks 50+ native, social ad units/metrics, so I’m spreading The Gospel of Native daily.My curiosity (or topic suggestion) is this: If you review the recently-leaked Foursquare deck and its possible Ad Plan (link below), what’s interesting about Foursquare’s plan is that they appear to be launching ‘DSP First,’ as opposed to launching ‘Internal Native First.’ I wish I had better words to describe this.http://clearslide.com/view/…Analogy: FB launched ‘Internal Native First’ by offering (for example) ‘Like’ ads that live only within FB, and years later launched FBX, whereby open web cookie data can be ported into FB from the open web to do re-targeting. But by contrast, it appears that Foursquare is launching ‘DSP First’ in its native ad roadmap.So the curiosity is this: Will we see more ‘DSP First’ or ‘Internal Native First’ approaches to native ad roadmaps going forward, and what should be the drivers of deciding which ‘First’ makes more sense.A wonky question perhaps, but I thought I’d think aloud about what I’d love to see.

    1. ShanaC

      I remember them back when they were back at epic social, and I wrote the first report they did about DSPs in competition with them.It is a neither/nor situation -social ads have good ROI when used in comjunction with well bought display. The fact that most people can’t buy display because they decided that oversaturation is a good idea is the more problematic approach. nevertheless I would say programmatic is the way to go for most cases.

    2. fredwilson

      i think you know the answer better than i do!

  9. Lauren Albrecht

    I love Zemanta! Wish I could be there today.

    1. Kirsten Lambertsen

      +1

  10. ShanaC

    Oh my god the sticker shock for some of these events. Sorry.

    1. Matt A. Myers

      It’s not as bad as some. It’s unfortunate that there’s that barrier to entry.

      1. rafer

        We’d love to make it free for everyone but we’ve hit capacity on the room even as we did it.

        1. Matt A. Myers

          Of course. Limitations are real possibilities.

  11. steph

    When I think of “native advertising” I think of magazines, where the ad doesn’t “look” like an ad, but instead is presented as a magazine article — though clearly labeled “advertising” or whatever. I always find those ads particularly tacky. Similarly, I find those ads in my twitter stream tacky. But I guess the market thinks otherwise.

  12. riemannzeta

    A little piece of history: Ben Franklin appears to have invented the native format ad.http://www.amazon.com/Soap-

  13. jason wright

    no speeding please.i wonder if Yahoo will be able to crack native advertising on Tumblr.

  14. Gennaro

    Fred – you should check out Umbel. Great company based in Austin empowering native ad sales.

  15. san carlos

    hello fred – for those who can’t attend any way to stream this live.

  16. markslater

    i was an early lover of the zemanta product…….have to say i have not been using it recently. i guess as i dont blog – that its not really aimed at me?

  17. cpokane

    Fred, this is my first time commenting on your blog – which is very good by the way. Just want to say I am highly skpetical of this native ad fad. Advertising is advertising pure and simple. Whether it is sponsored content or a banner ad, it is still advertorial.What is clear that to move up the channel, publisher need to innovate around their advertising offering, But to make it scale, it will have to be programmatic and biddable.Real-time content placements will become the norm. Look at Buzzfeed. It now realises the overhead and resource required to execute native campaigns flies in the face of its VC-backed business – and is looking to roll a programmatic-buying solution.Maybe as a vertical/niche publisher, it is possible to run a bespoke sponsored-content business, sold directly by your sales team. But big media properties will not be able to do this. And will it be difficult to execute at scale.Agencies/marketers want to buy scale via the programmatic channel, leveraging 1st and 3rd party data.. That is now the reality. If you want brand budgets on fluffy brand metrics, pile into video. The GRP can make you money for now – before TV/Video becomes biddable too.