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advertising technology called remarketing has proven alienating to online consumers. Remarketing, which lets advertisers follow someone around the Internet with a display ad, based on a previous search engine query, specific site visit, or other online action by the user, has increased in popularity in recent years.

The rapid spread of SnapChat--the picture sharing app that auto-deletes photos after ten seconds--shows that young people increasingly understand the need to keep some things secret, or at least to control the visibility and content of their communications. The migration of Millennials away from Facebook to the more anonymous Tumblr may be another sign. And the outcry raised by young Tumblr users in the wake of news that Yahoo! was purchasing the platform--driven by fears of more corporate control and increased advertising--only underscores the point.

Millennials are in the vanguard of mainstream online behavior: they were first on Facebook (after college students invited to the join in its earliest days), followed by their parents. A Millennial move towards greater online secrecy could represent the beginning of a larger shift that warrants additional research.

What matters is that they are even capable of viewing and collecting our personal, private data in this way. Why is it even possible that Verizon has this level of data to disclose? Why is it even possible that Apple can infer and cache our locations based on metadata? Why is it even possible that our emails can be skimmed for advertising opportunities? If we did not explicitly permit these things, then we have implicitly done so by choosing to go ahead and use the Internet this way either because the pros outweighed the cons. But now the cons are starting to add up.

we use the Internet as a sort of phantom extension of our own computers, putting things where they are accessible to us but we are not responsible for them. This was the so-called web 2.0: every personal computer and device, vastly more powerful and connected than ever before, yet acting as a thin client. Clearly, this is where we began to lose touch with reality.

How did we decide we were in control of the data we sent Google or Facebook? Why would we submit to such an obvious delusion? Does anyone really believe that these companies have our best interests in mind to any greater a degree than a dairy farmer and his cows? We submitted because they were the only option

The average top 1,000 web page is 1575 KB.

Page growth is a major reason why we keep finding, quarter after quarter, that pages are getting slower. And faster networks are not a cure-all for the challenges of page bloat.

According to Akamai’s most recent quarterly State of the Internet report, the global average connection speed among the top 50 internet-using countries is 3.3 Mbps — a 5.2% increase over the previous quarter. But when we’re seeing year-over-year page growth ranging from 45-50%, it’s easy to see that the gap is widening.

When you first load a webpage, the first thing that happens is it generates an impression, which is then forwarded to an ad server. So far, so good, but you might be surprised by how much that ad server knows about you. Using information gathered from Internet cookies, social media, and more, an ad server is capable of generating a unique profile of various metrics, almost like a QR code, that contains everything it knows about you: how old you are, your relationship status, what websites you browse, where you're located, etc. With that code generated, the ad server tries to match it against a pre-sold inventory of ads, almost like a key fitting into a lock. If the key fits, the process ends there, and an ad is returned that advertisers believe jibes with your unique personal profile. But it's what happens if the server doesn't have an ad that matches where things gets interesting.

Without a pre-sold ad to serve you, an ad server forwards your profile to an international ad exchange, where a network of different ad servers examine it and bid on it in real time. In a fraction of a second, a host of third-party servers around the world go into a bidding war for the opportunity to show you an ad, with the highest bidder taking the prize and filling your eyes.

the brands that win will prioritize engagement over exposure. They will flip the traditional approach of using mass reach to connect with the subset of people who matter on its head. They will super-serve the most important people for their brand first and use the resulting insights and advocacy to then broaden their reach and make the entire media and marketing plan work harder.

This generation has grown up living digital lives. This has fundamentally changed their relationship with media and technology — and with brands. They don’t want to be talked at, but they do want to be invited in to the discussion. They thrive on creation, curation, connection and community. As a result, we call them Gen C. The behaviors of Gen C have less to do with the year they were born and more to do with their attitude and mindset. For example, while 80% of people under 35 are Gen C, only 65% of Gen C is under 35 [1].

Gen C cares more about expressing themselves than any generation before.

A new study shows that readers find their minds wandering when using iPad versions of magazines. Publishers had always figured that the iPad magazine, being an interactive experience, would necessarily be different from the print incarnation, with readers bouncing around a bit. But the reality exceeds even that expectation.

"We thought that of course there's a lot of activity going on on an iPad, when there's so many things you can be doing -- between email, Netflix, playing games, reading magazines -- but they're actually bouncing around a lot more than we thought,"

the hope for many in publishing was that iPad magazines would be so engrossing that they would be "sticky," holding an audience captive similar to the way paper magazines do. In the ideal, rosiest scenario, from both the editorial and advertising standpoint, iPad magazines would lure readers, keep them there, draw their attention to elegant ads, and occasionally lead to direct purchases as a result of that ad.

According to the many advertising leaders we surveyed, connected devices and wearable technology--or, more broadly, the Internet of things--are top of mind for 2014. But where the last decade of digital experimentation has generally made technology front and center of an experience, the feeling is that the general relationship with technology has now matured to a point where it doesn’t need to be the star of the show. Instead, people are predicting a more seamless integration of technology into brand’s efforts. Or, as Scott Prindle, partner/chief digital officer, Made Movement puts it: “I think we'll see interesting opportunities to use technology to save us from technology.”

We'll see a trend towards ambient intelligence where our devices learn about our individual habits and interests, anticipate the kinds of information we're looking for, and surface it at the right time and in the right place. Our technology will be doing more work for us in the background, helping to free up the time that we're currently spending staring at screens.

It's better to try to invent the future rather than predict it.

Proactive software agents will reduce the need to waste time looking for information.

Contextual search tools like Google Now, which takes into account where you are and what you are doing to provide useful information, are the first big step towards anticipatory and responsive software agents.

In the consumer world right now, Apple's Siri is the most well-known example thus far of how a software agent will interact with humans, though it has its limitations, both in speech recognition and plain common sense. As that interaction is smoothed out, though, it is not hard to imaging giving agents like Siri or Google Now's voice search more permissions to act on the information at hand, instead of just reporting it. Once that hurdle is overcome, all of that predictive and contextual information that the Internet is starting to finding for us will have a smooth, human-like interface and better able to help us manage our days.

“If you’re designing a website and not thinking about the user experience on mobile and tablets, you’re going to disappoint a lot of users,” he warns. Designer Tom Muller thinks big brands getting on board will lead to agencies “increasingly using responsive design as a major selling point, persuading clients to future-proof digital marketing communications”. When doing so, Clearleft founder Andy Budd believes we’ll see an end to retrofitting RWD into existing products: “Instead, RWD will be a key element for a company’s mobile strategy, baked in from the start.” Because of this, Budd predicts standalone mobile-optimised sites and native apps will go into decline: “This will reduce the number of mobile apps that are website clones, and force companies to design unique mobile experiences targeted towards specific customers and behaviours.”

During 2012, the average site size crept over a megabyte, which designer/developer Mat Marquis describes as “pretty gross”, but he reckons there’s a trend towards “leaner, faster, more efficient websites” – and hopes it sticks. He adds: “Loosing a gigantic website onto the web isn’t much different from building a site that requires browser ‘X’: it’s putting the onus on users, for our own sakes.”

Designer and writer Stephanie Rieger reckons that although people now know “web design isn’t print,” they’ve “forgotten it’s actually software, and performance is therefore a critical UX factor”.

"It's such an empowering thing to be connected at high speed and without borders that it's become a human right"

The inventor of the web has said that governments must act to preserve the principle of net neutrality.

Net neutrality, the idea that all traffic on the internet should be treated equally, has been a controversial issue in the United States and is now moving up the political agenda in the UK.

Tumblr blogs tend to lack the glossy, professional, high-minded design of other social networking sites, including the behemoth that is Facebook and the SMS-inspired Twitter. If anything, these teenaged Tumblrs harken back to earlier web days where users built their own pages on AngelFire and Geocities, with atrocious backgrounds, upgraded cursors, and dancing GIF images galore. GIFs, in fact, are so hugely popular on Tumblr that the company even began experimenting with GIF-based ads.

According to Pew Internet’s study from earlier this year, 13 percent of Internet users ages 18-29 use Tumblr, while only 5 percent of those 30-49 do, 3 percent of those 50-64

Demographic data from Quantcast further drives home just how youthful a site Tumblr has become. 21 percent of its audience is under 18, 30 percent is 18 to 24, and 22 percent is 25 to 34

audience for mobile apps has hit 58 million in primetime — 8 p.m.

The IAB estimates that the U.S. mobile ad market brought in $3.4 billion in 2012. The IAB didn't break out revenues for apps vs. the mobile web, but Flurry has estimated that 80% of mobile activity occurs on apps

Kantar Media calculated that TV advertising accounted for $74 billion in ad revenues in 2012. Even if apps generated 100% of mobile ad revenues, the market would still be just 4.5% that of TV.

A writer for USA Today shows that all ages are in on this trend, but instead of an age group, he blames the change on the cloud, the heavenly home our entertainment goes to when current media models die. As all forms of media make their journey into a digital, de-corporeal space, research shows that people are beginning to actually prefer this disconnected reality to owning a physical product.

Even in this strange new world, the economic laws of scarcity apply, and they are precisely what's shifting. To "own something" in the traditional sense is becoming less important, because what's scarce has changed. Ownership just isn't hard anymore. We can now find and own practically anything we want, at any time, through the unending flea market of the Internet. Because of this, the balance between supply and demand has been altered, and the value has moved elsewhere.

The biggest insight we can glean from the death of ownership is about connection. This is the thing which is now scarce, because when we can easily acquire anything, the question becomes, "What do we do with this?" The value now lies in the doing.

During “primetime,” which for apps also includes those “after-work” hours of around 7 to 10 p.m., app usage among the top 250 iOS and Android applications spikes to a peak of 52 million consumers, the company found.

App usage tends to drop off overnight, and weekends see higher daytime app usage through the day (9-5). During the normal workday, people use apps at least 75 percent as much as on weekends

a couple of important things about the app audience: first that it has reached critical mass, and second that it is still highly fragmented relative to more traditional forms of media

"It's interesting. Do I want everything I read to be broadcasted? To be honest, I'm not sure I always do," Herman says. "Which is why, on Storify at least, I cancel it when it's not something I want to share." Should readers have to be on guard and take that extra step? And what's the upside of frictionless sharing? Why is this good for readers? "I mean, clearly it's more meaningful when someone decides to actively share something," Herman says. "It would be bad if a share from just happening to read something through Open Graph got the same weight as something that you actually shared."

Instead of a willful act of sharing, which says to your Facebook friends, "This matters to me," frictionless sharing is just a broadcast of your Internet habits. There's no benefit for you except as a kind of vain performance, and there's very little benefit to your friends, since the signal-to-noise ratio goes way up.

[Facebook is] doing some tweaking with the algorithm to make it less prominent," Herman says. "I guess they're realizing, you know, maybe these things aren't as engaging as they thought they would be."