commbasics

Reading about the Google quarterly report yesterday gave me the subject of today's post.  Google is seeing a continued slump in ad rates and reports are coming out that show that mobile and online advertising is not seen as much by consumers as some in the media have claimed.  Yet budgets on mobile and online advertising are climbing fast.  How long before advertisers realize they are not getting a decent ROI and start pulling back? Of course, the knee jerk reaction is that the medium is at fault.  After all the content in the ads is the next thing to Shakespeare, right? It seems to me, and there are studies that back this up , that the approaches to content are still mired in the belief that online and mobile media are still "mass media" with the goal of reaching out the the lowest common denominator.  Campaigns are fileld with the wrong content targeted at the wrong people most of the time, which marginalizes customers. We recently had a me...

An article today in Forbes on ethics in sponsored content  brought back memories of our recent discussions regarding UBM Tech's methodology changes and the larger discussion about whether corporations can be expected to deliver ethical content. The article points out that Edelman has posted their own set of ethics regarding sponsored content that remarkably mirrors Footwasher Media's position:  That it isn't PR or advertising.  It's something different from what most corporate advocates practice and it must be, by nature, ethical or it loses all value. Many people in the news business have taken ethical standards for granted.  They seem to believe that they are intertwined with the genesis of journalism itself.  It isn't true.  The news business, supported by advertising began in the 1700s with Benjamin Franklin's founding of the Pennsylvania Gazette , but the separation of advertising from editorial did not appear until th...

Activists can and often do reveal the truth, but the primary objective remains winning the argument. That includes the argument about whether a reporter has to be politically and ideologically neutral to practice journalism. <img src="http://meter-svc.nytimes.com/meter.gif"/> via www.nytimes.com Got this sent to me by the redoubtable Bill Barron at Hearst today. It bears spreading about as we wring our hands over lost objectivity.

UBM Tech  just named Patrick MannionVice President/Brand Director Electronics Group reporting to Scott Mozarsky, President, Media and Partner Solutions. Mannion has risen rapidly in the ranks at UBM Tech after returning from a brief stint as Director of Content for Hearst Electronics Group.  He's been leading the charge at EDN.com since the acquisition of the title from Canon/Reed a few years ago.  He's fully engaged in the UBM Tech philosophy switch announced at the start of the year and he's a posterboy for the position that the company's philosophy is lacking in journalistic integrity.  I've not known many journalists who understand the ethics of the profession better. Mannion will oversee the electronics communities including EETimes.com, EDN.com, Embedded.com and, I assume EBNonline.com (although that wasn't specifically mentioned in the announcement, which gives me cause to wonder how long the title will last).  He will a...