Mike Sprouse

Featured Author

: Michael Sprouse joined Epic Advertising as Chief Marketing Officer on June 1, 2007. His current responsibilities include overseeing all marketing strategy for the company, media buying, direct marketing programs, public relations strategy and outreach, internal communications, corporate development and cross-platform initiatives.

Prior to Epic Advertising, Sprouse served as Senior Vice President of Marketing for Playboy Enterprises, Inc. In his time at Playboy, Sprouse helped to oversee a business transformation as the youngest senior executive in the company's 54 year history. His marketing leadership opened up many public speaking and PR opportunities including the Keynote presentation at ETail (twice) as well as numerous press mentions.

Market Chaos: What It Means for Us

Written on: September 25th 2008
Author: | Mike Sprouse

ADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — If you are reading this, congratulations. You have lived through one of the craziest, most unfortunate, most misunderstood and debated series of weeks in our financial history. For those who think they can predict what is in store for our profession 30 days or a year from [...] More...

Where in the World is Online Advertising?

Written on: September 16th 2008
Author: | Mike Sprouse

ADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — Business publications, analyst reports, and the blogosphere in recent weeks and months have cited a slight weakening trend, compared to previous forecasts, in the U.S. online advertising industry. The key word here is “slight”; compared to overall ad spending, online advertising appears quite robust and positive, [...] More...

Can 314 Ad Networks Really Thrive?

Written on: August 26th 2008
Author: | Mike Sprouse

ADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — I have heard several industry insiders and experts who closely follow the progress of ad networks approximate recently that there are “hundreds” of them. 200. 300. I’ve even seen 314, written by one bold blogger daring to somehow pinpoint the exact number. When one considers exchanges, affiliate [...] More...

The Future of Display Ad Measurement

Written on: August 6th 2008
Author: | Mike Sprouse

ADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — The topic of online display advertising effectiveness has been covered in many forums, including the AlwaysOn Global 250 and Stanford Summit which our company attended last week. A hot topic of our own presentation, as well as many of the discussion groups and panels, was what display [...] More...

Lessons to Live by From Russert and Woods

Written on: June 20th 2008
Author: | Mike Sprouse

ADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — As of press date for this article, we are a short time removed from two landmark events in our history: the passing of the legendary journalist Tim Russert; and Tiger Woods’ monumental U.S. Open performance. In a span of 72 hours, I felta range of emotions in [...] More...

Why CMOs Can’t Keep Their Jobs

Written on: June 4th 2008
Author: | Mike Sprouse

ADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — This month, I thought it would be interesting to focus a discussion on the role of the Chief Marketing Officer, purely from my informal polling and observations around the marketing function from a variety of other online- and offline-based companies.As of press date for this article, I [...] More...

Marketing & Tech: Bring Back That Lovin’ Feeling!

Written on: May 9th 2008
Author: | Mike Sprouse

ADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — If you work in the online marketing industry, or anywhere in the digital media environment, you’ve undoubtedly been exposed to the inner workings of technology departments as well as your very own marketing department. In the old days, the dynamic between the groups was push-pull or pull-push. [...] More...

When a Recession Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade

Written on: April 17th 2008
Author: | Mike Sprouse

ADOTAS EXCLUSIVE – You simply can’t turn on a television or radio, or surf the net without hearing or seeing the dreaded “R word.” The topic of a recession is everywhere; from being a headline story in the presidential election, to being a major driver of new economic stimulus packages, [...] More...

Top 10 Do’s And Don’ts Of Mobile Content Marketing

Written on: March 5th 2008
Author: | Mike Sprouse

ADOTAS EXCLUSIVE - There has been much written lately regarding the online marketing of ringtones and other mobile content. Various settlements and cooperative agreements have been reached between government agencies and companies. What can marketers, publishers and networks do, and equally importantly, not do if they market mobile content to [...] More...

Performance Marketing Just Works

Written on: February 7th 2008
Author: | Mike Sprouse

I was recently reviewing several reports showing U.S. Online Advertising Revenue by Pricing Model. Every year, with one exception, revenue from purely performance-based pricing models grew at a higher rate than the CPM (cost-per-impression) pricing model or a hybrid of the two. This growth has resulted in almost an equal [...] More...

Spotlight

HipCricket: SMS Is Still the Wave of the FutureADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — HipCricket, a mobile marketing company, has been changing the way advertisers think about reaching their audiences since [...] more...