Alice In Upfront Land

Scott Karp summarises the alice-in-wonderland quality of the US upfront process which this year secured $9.3bn dollars for the five networks, an annual increase of 5 per cent.  It seems that this price inflation will continue until a new reliable metrics driven market appears for digital video - which is what Google is effectively trying to do with its EchoStar deal.  This was recently described to me as: "We know the bike's a bit wobbly but it's the only one we've got".  Karp has also written up this helpful analysis of the post-DoubleClick online advertising market and how niches are starting to appear, including the intriguing open-source offering Openads.