Darren Herman

Holiday shopping mayhem used to begin on Black Friday.  Many of us all have our own crazy shopping stories and there are even some YouTube videos of people filming their Black Friday shopping experiences.  For retailers, this marked the official date to begin holiday displays and holiday discounts and for American consumers, it was the [...]

I’m taking a cue from Fred Wilson on how he crowdsourced his Web 2.0 Keynote presentation.  The wisdom of all of you are much smarter than myself, so why not work together on this upcoming presentation.  What presentation you might ask?
Announced today, I am the keynote speaker at the Admonsters Ad Ops Forum on December [...]

I spent last Thursday afternoon and all day on Friday up at my alma mater, Skidmore College.  The reason I went up was to attend a few meetings and to give a presentation to their Marketing/Advertising and Entrepreneurship classes.  The point of this post is less about the presentation but more about my lunch afterward [...]

Saw this presentation on my friend Fred’s blog this morning and thought it was perfect for here.  Of all of the parts of the presentation (which I believe can be done in 120 slides rather than 200+), the slide that talks about data+insights hits really close to home during this part of my career and [...]

Recent headlines (within last 10 days):

Yahoo earnings beat expectations, profit triples, stock soars
Apple earnings put stock near all time high
Seagate Tech earnings surge to $179 million
IBM reports 14% profit growth
Sandisk Q3 Blowout!

I’m not going to pretend I’m a Wall Street analyst or an amateur Stocktwits guru, but where there is smoke, there is fire.  While [...]

Lets define before we begin.
Ad Network Platforms:  platforms being built by current ad networks to service agencies and brands directly
Demand Platforms:  meta platforms that sit on top of multiple inventory sources
There seems to be a battle brewing between ad network platforms vs. demand platforms.  The trend I’ve spoken about on this blog for a while [...]

Key parts of our talk on Agency Demand Platforms

What and why are agency demand platforms being created
Business models emerging
Impression level valuation

If you are interested in any of the above topics, take 20 minutes and watch the video.  Top agency holding company (and agency) execs chatting during Advertising Week.  Participants include Razorfish, Cadreon (IPG), VivaKi (Publicis), [...]

I have not been updating the blog as much as I’d like and have a few long-form posts I’d like to write, but based on my schedule right now, that’s a long-shot.  I’m going to condense the posts into a paragraph each and if people want me to expand on them, please comment or reach [...]

When I was first asked to blog, I turned it down.
When I was first told about Twitter, I smiled and said no thanks.
When I just read about Life Recorders over on TechCrunch, I said no way.   There was a poll at the bottom on the TC article that asked users to vote whether or not [...]

Even if you are not a tennis fan, you should check out the official website for the US Open.  The guys behind the scenes at the USTA and their partners at IBM have put together a cross channel experience that beats any other league-developed initiative that I’ve seen (MLB, NBA, NHL, NFL).
The US Open is [...]