Adsmarket Volunteers with The Shorashim Group for the 2009 Holidays

The Jewish holidays are fast approaching, with Rosh HaShanah this Friday night and Yom Kippur and Sukkot soon after. Like every year, we in Adsmarket volunteer our time helping the Shorashim Group (Shorashim means “roots” in Hebrew) by donating money & assisting with the delivery of food packages in Tel Aviv Jaffa.

The Shorashim Group are a group of volunteers who take it upon themselves each holiday to make a difference, putting food on the table of those who otherwise might go without. They work with the Tel Aviv Municipality, who give them information about who is in need of assistance. They do really great work directly touching the lives of many, and it’s a real privilege for us to have the opportunity to help them.

This morning a group of Adsmarket volunteers got up early to spend time delivering boxes of food to those in need in Tel Aviv.

More about Shorashim Group: Shorashim Group is a registered, nonprofit organization of volunteers who are mobilized whenever there is an important issue to deal with. We have no storage or transport facilities, and rely solely on dedicated volunteers. Among other projects, we meet twice a year, before Rosh Hashanah and Passover, with the aim to bring the Holiday spirit to homes where a smile and the ability to sit around a holiday table are rare commodities. Last Passover (2009), as a result of our volunteers’ devotion and efforts we delivered over 750 food boxes which translated to as many families who were able to sit at the Holiday dining table with self-respect and a broad smile. With your devoted help, we wish to repeat our substantial achievements this upcoming Rosh Hashanah.

We encourage you to donate by credit card on Shorashim’s secure website.

Something strange at Adsmarket today…

Walking into the office today, like any other, had it’s usual share of howdys, heys, and boker tovs (that’s Hebrew for good morning). What wasn’t expected was the sight of our beloved sales team walking around in nothing other than suits! Hard to believe, since pretty much every day at Adsmarket is Casual Friday. I think it has something to do with the proximity of the Mediterranean Sea and the fact that no shoes but sandals will do from March through November, and the general fun and relaxed attitude we have around here. We’re not complaining!

It turns out that Menachem, our VP of Sales and Business Development, gave the Advertising Sales Team a Formal Wednesday, and they met the challenge, coming in looking dapper and dressed for success. So rare to see Uzi, Julian, Maor, Barak, and Martin in their finest, that we had to take a photo to prove it happened!

Facebook and Twitter – down at the same time?!

I just tried to get into the Adsmarket Facebook Page to get ahold of their sweet FanBox for this blog, and I couldn’t do anything!  I tried logging out and that didn’t even work.  I searched online for “facebook down” and got nothing.  So I decided to tweet about it, thinking that SOMEONE out there would be able to tell me that life wasn’t over and that our page still existed.  But then, I was aghast to see that TWITTER WAS DOWN TOO!  Mashable covered it, thank god!

What’s that about? 

The feeling of having something really juicy to say, namely that facebook AND twitter were down simultaneously, had me aching to share it, but I had no voice without either one of them! 

So, I did things old-school-style: I started running down the halls at Adsmarket shouting, “Twitter and Facebook are down!  I can’t believe it!”

Nobody even looked up from their desks… I’m unfollowing them all right now!!

Here’s hoping life will go back to normal.  I’m sure our Facebook publishers are reeling!

How Green is Adsmarket?

To help reduce our company’s carbon footprint and to inspire our employees to be mindful of theirs, we at Adsmarket have taken a few proud steps on the path to being green. This week, Adsmarketeers arrived to work to discover real silverware and real coffee mugs in the breakroom (why only ONE Star Wars mug??). This step cuts significantly the amount of caffeine-related landfill destined trash that we have been responsible for in the past.

To put this in perspective, each year in the USA, more than 40 billion plastic utensils are thrown into landfills. As you know, Adsmarket is located in Israel, which has about 2.3% of the US population. So if we apply this to 40 billion plastic utensils, that means that approximately 17 billion plastic utensils are ending up in Israel’s landfills. In a landfill, a piece of plastic may take between 500-1000 years to breakdown into smaller components. So, there’s more math to do but you get it.

In addition to supplying everyone with ceramic mugs and reusable spoons, we are recycling glass and plastic bottles, and encouraging paper conservation by adding statements like these to our email signatures (feel free to steal it!)

   Before printing this email please make sure you really need to.

To find out how green we really are, we took an anonymous (who wants to be known as the only person not composting his dog’s dailies?) poll yesterday.

Here are the results:

HOW GREEN IS ADSMARKET?

33% of employees take the bus to work.

86% of employees recycle at work.

73% of employees recycle at home.

60% of employees use cloth bags for grocery shopping.

Next month, we’ll do an even larger survey, following up on our efforts to reduce our carbon footprint. By holding each other accountable we hope to see improvements each month!

What about you? What efforts do you see at your workplace or at your home to better the planet? Send us your comments!

Reduce, ReUse, Recycle… It’s SO hot right now.

What do Adsmarket, HSBC, logging, and relationships have in common?

Today I was stumbling around on StumbleUpon, which, for the uninitiated with time to spare is a website that allows you to browse the internet according to what interests you. Pick a few keywords and “start stumbling” to be taken to real websites that match your choices. You can say you like it or don’t like it and what is shown to you will adapt to show you more of what you like.

So anyway, I was stumbling on some sites using the keyword ‘advertising’, and stumbled upon “GORGEOUS”, which is the company site for an advertising production company in the UK. Definitely check it out, but not yet; read this first! But when you do, check out Vince’s Lumberjack ad.

First of all, let me say that I am one of those people who would rather watch 2 hours of movie previews instead of the movies themselves, and when I lived in the US I looked forward to Superbowl Sunday each year in anticipation of the newest and smartest commercials from the biggest brands. I think it’s the fact that you get the complete storyline: premise, build-up, climax or plot twist, and resolution in under a minute in most cases. No bad acting, cheesy music, and drawn-out endings. What’s not to like?
So, this site has a great selection of killer commercials for various clients like HSBC, Heinz, and the BBC, some of which made me laugh my butt off (a great way to start the workday) and a few which had me choked up and trying to hide my blubbering from my officemate.

Since at Adsmarket we are consumed with media of a different sort, like banner, text, and facebook ads, we focus our advertising brillance on the best ads for these outlets. But I have to say that it’s very refreshing to sit for 10 minutes and watch the old boys of TV work their sellular magic. I recommend that we internet geeks take what we can back to our meetings and brainstorming sessions and think beyond the 468 x 90.

Facebook Vanity URL’s – We didn’t want one anyway…

Alas, the countdown to the Facebook vanity URL free-for-all ended with me sitting in front of my computer, dispapointed, but motivated! Disappointed that our Adsmarket page on Facebook would remain at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/pages/Adsmarketcom-The-Science-of-Performance/52855998396, but motivated to recruit more and more fans so we can graduate to a more Vanity URL-worthy status!

If you’ve never seen our Facebook page, we’ve got a lot going on there. Liat is always busy posting great pictures of our events around the world, and I always share things there that I don’t share here. Why? Well, it would not be cool to have the same content everywhere, and I really like Facebook’s link sharing thing, the choice of thumbnails, etc. It’s so easy to use!

Anyway, do your favorite affiliate network a favor and become a fan of Adsmarket on Facebook, so we can be validated by the powers that be over at FB that we are worthy of a better URL. We know that we can’t send you there directly, so please just log in to Facebook (like you normally do 10 times a day if you’re like me), and copy and paste this into the Search field : Adsmarket.com -The Science of Performance

You should see our Group and our Page. Hey, why not join both while you’re at it? (Although I will say the Page is busier and has funnier jokes than his Group counterpart.)

The Iron Chef of Adsmarket

So, now I get a chance to share with you about Adsmarket’s company brunch last week in honor of Shavuot. I realize that this post is a little late, but with Affilicon in town there was too much to cover and not enough time!

I will educate readers by explaining that Shavuot is a holiday in the Jewish tradition that commemorates the event of God giving the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai (I’ve never been to Sinai myself, but almost any Israeli can tell you that it is THE illest place ever, and the best location for laying on a beach and doing absolutely nothing while eating lots of meat on a stick from beach-roaming vendors.)
In honor of this event, Israelis wear white and eat dairy foods. The reasons for this are widely argued, but anyway we are obsessed with cheese here, so this holiday is a great excuse to overindulge.

For our company brunch, held on the roof of the building we share with McCann Erickson, each person was asked to bring a home-cooked contribution, and a competition was held for the best dishes. Oh, abundant dairy!

Adsmarket networking done right: at a bar!

Liat and Omer with our friends from Intela at the Affilicon Pre-Event Party.

Last night was the official pre-exhibition party for Affilicon, the largest gathering of affiliates outside the US. A few of us Adsmarketeers went to check it out. It was a great time, and a chance to check out Israel’s thriving affiliate scene in action doing what affiliates do best: schmooze with booze!

The party took place at Buba Mara, an underground Tel Aviv hotspot near the bohemian and hip area surrounding the Cinematheque art theater. Adsmarket people arriving at the scene: Liat Arbesman, Adsmarket’s Head of Publisher Recruitment, Publisher Account Services reps Hila Amishay and Omer Pupkin, and blog administrator (yours truly) Daneka Soudak. We met some clients visiting from the US, as well as set up meetings for the next two days surrounding the Affilicon exhibition ( June 1-2).

There are some cool photos of The Big Schmooze at our Flickr page. Enjoy, and if you are in Israel going to Affilicon, drop us a line while you’re in town!

Publishers can contact us at publishers@adsmarket.com, Advertisers can send email to advertisers@adsmarket.com.

When you care enough to send the very best…

After we sent some Israeli chocolate to our China offices (it was a care package, because we care), they sent us this photo. Maybe we should have cared enough to send more than one piece of chocolate!

From L to R: Niank, Kwong, Tina, Tim, David