140 Matching Annotations
  1. Last 7 days
    1. The current system of production is based on mass production, and requires the constant creation of new desires and needs, which need to be created through advertising, and require massive forms of potentially unnecessary material production

      for - addendum - add ecological footprint of advertising industry to material waste generated by consumer culture - from Substack article - The Cosmo-Local Plan for our Next Civilization - Michel Bauwens - 2024, Dec 20

      addendum - add ecological footprint of advertising industry to material waste generated by consumer culture - The advertising industry itself has a huge ecological footprint as well, in addition to the extra, unneeded material that planned obsolescence creates - references to be added

  2. Oct 2024
    1. for - Book - Society of the Spectacle - 1967 - Guy Debord - Advertising - critique

      Summary - This is a youtube that presents the work of French Marxist theorist Guy Debord and his important book "The society of the spectacle" that critically examines the power of mass media to shape our reality and transform us - from an active participant to - a passive spectator (hence the "spectacle" and consumer - When mass media fabricates images that become the aspirations for large swaths or the population,<br /> - it can implant market ideology that channels their future consumerist behaviour to conform with elitist hidden agenda - The idea emerged from a group of leftist scholars and activists called the Situationist International that dissolved in 1972 but - the idea is quite relevant to describing global capitalism and information systems in modernity

      to - Wikipedia - Situationist International - https://hyp.is/L4ObqISEEe-gJpNANP04Mw/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International

  3. Aug 2024
    1. Remington Quie- Riter Typewriter 1955

      "students who use typewriters get up to 38% better grades."

      "gives book reports and themes a professional look"

      gendered sales technique - "girls particularly appreciate" the easy change ribbon system...

  4. Jun 2024
    1. Advocating for the great booksidea, then, could mean fighting against anti-intellectualism, antira-tionalism (i.e., the reliance on ideology), and “agnotology.”

      definition of agnotology:

      Within the sociology of knowledge, agnotology (formerly agnatology) is the study of deliberate, culturally induced ignorance or doubt, typically to sell a product, influence opinion, or win favour, particularly through the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data (disinformation). More generally, the term includes the condition where more knowledge of a subject creates greater uncertainty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnotology

  5. May 2024
  6. Apr 2024
    1. In this connection it is also usefulsometimes to bear in mind, that the small article does not as-a rule admit of systematic treatment of a given subject, thatperiodical literature is tied to time for its appearance, thatnovelty and notoriety, catering to the masses, i.e. to thealmighty dollar, play a good part in the production of unripeliterature, that some sort of news may be supplied merely tohelp us swallow the ubiquitous advertisement.

      Again he's mentioning advertising... obviously it was starting to become a significant factor in people's regular reading sources (presumably magazines) to bear mentioning it and advising caution as a result.

    2. Advertising although somewhat discredited is anart which rests for its success on a close study of psychology.

      psychology was already being applied to advertising in 1908...

    3. That is not the case.It is true, a variety of published indexes, catalogues and biblio-graphies to periodical and other literature exists, but they donot and cannot meet our individual case, for1 Every individual moves in a sphere of his own and coversindividual ground such as a printed index cannot touch.2 Printed indexes although they give usable information,cannot go sufficiently into details, they must studyabove all the common requirements of a number ofsubscribers sufficiently large to assure their existenceand continuance (apart from the question of adver-tising).

      Kaiser's argument for why building a personal index of notes is more valuable than relying on the indexes of others.

      Note that this is answer still stands firmly even after the advent of both the Mundaneum, Google, and other digital search methods (not to mention his statement about ignoring advertising, which obviously had irksome aspects even in 1911.) Our needs and desires are idiosyncratic, so our personal indexes are going to be imminently more valuable to us over time because of these idiosyncrasies. Sure, you could just Google it, but Google answers stand alone and don't build you toward insight without the added work of creating your own index.

      Some of this is bound up in the idea that your own personal notes are far more valuable than the notes someone else may have taken and passed along to you.

  7. Mar 2024
    1. Whether this "personalised advertisement" really works better than traditional one is up to debate. For Tim Hang, author of "Subtime Attention Crisis" and for Cory Doctorow, author of "How to destroy surveillance capitalism", the real impact on sales is negligible but as marketers think it works, they invest massive money in it, making the whole technology a very lucrative bubble.

      the effectiveness of personalised advertising is still up for debate. I should look up Subtime Attention Crisis and read How to destroy surveillance capitalism.

  8. Jan 2024
    1. One of the numbers we quoted was a high estimate at the time, which was 5000 ads per day and that's the number that got latched on to. So this 5000 number was not for the number of adverts that a consumer actually sees and registers each day, but rather for the clutter as Walker calls it, these large numbers are not counts of the number of ads that people pay attention to.

      Number of impressions of advertising

      This advertising impressions may roll over us, but we don't actually see and register them.

  9. Dec 2023
    1. Only a few other American books seem to have been published on the "how to" of advertising until the 1880s. In that decade, several types of publications began to appear: pamphlets or books that promoted the services of individual agencies; instructional books on how to do the work of advertising; and professional journals. Among the journals, one of the earliest and most successful was Printers' Ink, founded in 1888 by the ubiquitous George P. Rowell. The early promotional books, well exemplified by the "Blue Books" of the J.Walter Thompson Company [several examples are part of this project] sometimes combined information on the importance of advertising with samples of the agency's work, photos of their offices, and sometimes media information (e.g. newspaper or magazine circulation and rate information). Thompson also started very early to publish promotional books targeted to specific markets; The Red Ear of 1887 [excerpted in this project] listed agricultural papers that would be the appropriate medium for advertisers of farm products.

      promotional book

    2. The first advertising agency in America was set up by Volney Palmer in Philadelphia in 1841. For the next several decades the work of agencies was to broker space for advertisers in newspapers. It was not until the 1870s and 1880s that agencies began to resemble the "full service" operations that became the standard in the 20th century. Full service agencies may provide, for example, consultation on marketing problems, product naming, package design, advertisement design and production, and research, as well as purchasing media space or time to get the advertising message out to the public.

      first advertisement agencies and their mission

  10. Nov 2023
    1. It spent just over $5m to advertise its compact Bolt option over the same time period. Ford spent $61.2m (£48.7m) to advertise its electric F150 , and around $9m to advertise its mid-size electric Mustang. Among the top automotive advertisers, only BMW and Hyundai are spending as much or more to market their more efficient EVs.

      the f150 is its biggest selling autombile. I'd assume this would be higher though, surely?

    1. There was no automatic advertising delivery. There was no personalization, or any kind of tracking. Instead, I go through all of this every morning, picking which ads I thought looked interesting today, and manually changing and updating the pages on my site.This also meant that, because there was no tracking, the advertising companies had no idea how many times an ad was viewed, and as such, we would only get paid per click.Now, the bigger sites had started to do dynamic advertising, which allowed them to sell advertising per view, but, as an independent publisher, I was limited to only click-based advertising.However, that was actually a good thing. Because I had to pick the ads manually, I needed to be very good at understanding my audience and what they needed when they visited my site. And so there was a link between audience focus and the advertising.Also, because it was click based, it forced me as an independent publisher to optimize for results, whereas a 'per view' model often encouraged publishers to lower their value to create more ad views.

      Per-click versus per-view advertising in the 1900s internet

  11. Sep 2023
  12. Aug 2023
    1. And where the artists take part in a fantasy of overconsumptionThe place where artists play a distinctive role, exactly like high-level sports athletes, is in the propagation of a certain fantasy.
      • for: W2W, carbon inequality, carbon footprint - 1%, carbon emissions - 1%, luxury advertising, luxury advertising contracts, carbon emissions - luxury goods
      • key insight
        • the elites are often the main popularizers, influencers and propagandists of the fantasy of overconsumption
        • culture of overconsumption
        • such elites have a close tie to the luxury industry via large advertising contracts
        • Media posts critical of the carbon air travel emissions of famous DJ named DJ Snake offers a prime example of a common attitude of privilege and self-righteousness found amongst a number of elites
  13. Jul 2023
    1. The lynchings of Italians came at a time when newspapers in the South had established the gory convention of advertising the far more numerous public murders of African-Americans in advance — to attract large crowds

      Advertising lynchings in advance to attract large crowds and "mark it on your calendars".

    1. This is nonsense: when users are given the choice to block surveillance, they overwhelmingly do. Apple's iOS devices offer users a one-click opt-out from app-based surveillance. Ninety-six percent of iOS users have opted out (presumably the other four percent were confused — or on Meta's payroll).

      Note: find this link

  14. Jun 2023
    1. Technology is valuable and empowering, but at what end direct cost? Consumers don't have available data for the actual costs of the options they're choosing in many contexts.

      What if that reprocessing costs the equivalent of three glasses of waters? Is it worth it for our environment, especially when the direct costs to the "consumer" are hidden into advertising models.

      (via Brenna)

  15. May 2023
    1. Get some of the lowest ad prices while protecting your brand with a system backed by Verity and Grapeshot. Rest easy that your ads will only show up where you’d like them to.

      Is there a word or phrase in the advertising space which covers the filtering out of websites and networks which have objectionable material one doesn't want their content running against?

      Contextual intelligence seems to be one...

      Apparently the platforms Verity and Grapeshot (from Oracle) protect against this.

    2. https://jetpack.com/blaze/

      Looks like Jetpack is getting into the ad space leveraging WordPress.com and Tumblr.com with a product called "Blaze".

      Saw this by an ad in my own website back end as a result of the Jetpack plugin with a text ad that read:

      Reach more people across millions of sites. Promote your content on the WordPress.com and Tumblr ad network using Blaze.

  16. Apr 2023
  17. Mar 2023
    1. The Scrum method, which is powered by Post-it® Products, breaks up a project into bite-sized modules. It helps to track each task through various stages of completion, and ensures that everyone on the team is aware of progress and updates. It can help turn thoughts into actions, and actions into achievement.

      Seeing this, I can't help but think about some of the ads from the early 1900s for filing cabinets and card indexes which had similar named methodologies for productivity, but which were also advertisements for purchasing the associated physical goods.

      Examples: Shaw-Walker, Yawman & Erbe, etc.

    1. https://www.ebay.com/itm/155447667554

      This Catalog has a page with the various sizes of card catalog boxes available from Cole Steel in 1950s. The external sizes can be useful for placing the individual card sizes for some of these boxes on the secondary market.

      They also include approximate card capacities.

    1. Medicine shows became popular after the Civil War when patent medicine salesmen traveled the "kerosene circuit" in rural America. Flourishing until the passage of 1906 Fair Food and Drug Act made them obsolete, medicine shows provided entertainment to attract audiences and then used their intermissions to sell their products.

      This pattern would later be seen in later radio and television when product pitchmen sponsored entertainment in return for commercial time.

      (Bob Dylan, Theme Time Radio Hour, "Doctors," February 20, 2008 via http://www.oldhatrecords.com/)

      See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_show


      Also related to tent revival shows which featured music and religion as entertainment and socializing.

      Example in music: Neil Diamond's song: Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show

    1. TheGlobeWernicke Vertical FilingCabinets aremadeformosteverysizeofcommercialpapermanufacturedandin-cludeBill,Letter,Cap,Report,Document,and Card Indexfiles.

      Noticing that while other filing companies have smaller half or quarter page ads in System, Globe-Wernicke Co. has a full page add for their filing cabinets.

    2. he Automatic File & Index Co.
    3. OurNew "400"SeriesNo.400(likecut)hasdeepdrawerarrangedwithVERTICALFILINGEQUIPMENT,writingbednotbrokenbytypewriter,whichdisappearsindust-proofcompartment.GUNNDESKSaremadein250differentpatterns,inallwoodsandfinishes,fittedwith ourtimesavingDROP-FRONTPigeonholebox.Ifyoudesireanup-to-datedeskofanydescriptionandbestpossiblevalueforyourmoneygetaGunn.Ourreference-TheUser-TheManwiththeGunn."Soldbyallleadingdealersorshippeddirectfrom thefactory.Sendforcatalogueof desksandfilingdevices-mailedFREE."AwardedGoldMedal,World'sFair,St.Louis."GUNNFURNITURECO.,GrandRapids,Mich.MakersofGunnSec-tionalBookCases

      Gunn Desks and filing cabinets

      Example advertisement of a wooden office desk with pigeonholes and a small card index box on the desktop as well as a drawer pull with a typewriter sitting on it.

    4. ARDS CAN BE USEDINSOMEBRANCH OF YOUR BUSINESS

      INDEX CARDS CAN BE USED IN SOME BRANCH OF YOUR BUSINESS<br /> We have eight very useful forms. You can use one or more to good advantage and profit. Let us send you the Samples?<br /> UNITED STATES CARD INDEX CO.<br /> Office and Factory: 112 Liberty Street, NEW YORK<br /> Also send for our Priced Sample Set 'E' which includes all rulings, grades and weights of Index Cards and Guides.'

  18. Jan 2023
    1. ultimately advertisers are more interested in understanding what might nudge users towards certain behaviors, and that’s perhaps better understood as a game of probable futures more than accurate presents
  19. Nov 2022
  20. Oct 2022
  21. Sep 2022
    1. The branch network is an extension of advertising, sometimes extremely literally; there are branches which exist for no purpose other than “had a city-approved large billboard adjacent to a thoroughfare with hundreds of thousands of desirable commuters daily.” The bank built the branch and staffed it with about half a dozen professionals as the cost of being able to put their logo on the billboard for half a century.

      Branch banks as foci for advertising

      The author describes a situation where a branch was situated so it had control over a prominent billboard; the story is unattributed, but seems plausible.

  22. Aug 2022
    1. Selections from CarlyleEdited by H. W. BOYNTON. i2mo, cloth, 288 pages. Price, 75 cents.

      And here I was not knowing who Carlyle was just a day or two ago and now I'm seeing advertisements for collections of his work! 😁

      Apparently I've just been reading the wrong things and jumping back to the early 21st century is where it's all at.

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  23. Jul 2022
    1. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.241504/page/n247/mode/2up

      I can't tell what the publication date is on this (the original book was 1926, but this edition appears to be 1940s+) but there's a fantastic advertisement for Pelmanism in the back of this Pelican edition of Beatrice Webb's My Apprenticeship.

      Addendum:<br /> A few pages before this in the advertisements is a mention that the list of Pelican books listed is only to 1938, so this was likely a 1938 publication, which also puts it into a time period in which Bruno Furst was operating.

      The publication of this advertisement in a text which may have been read by students and academics is a fascinating link of these practices, though her appendix on note taking was not included in this particular volume (1 of 2 apparently).


      Christof Ludwig Poehlmann aka Christopher Louis Pelman (Anglicized) aka Ludwig Poehlmann (as known to Bruno Furst in Germany)


      Link to: - http://tw.boffosocko.com/#Christof%20Ludwig%20Poehlmann

    1. reply to: https://ariadne.space/2022/07/01/a-silo-can-never-provide-digital-autonomy-to-its-users/

      Matt Ridley indicates in The Rational Optimist that markets for goods and services "work so well that it is hard to design them so they fail to deliver efficiency and innovation" while assets markets are nearly doomed to failure and require close and careful regulation.

      If we view the social media landscape from this perspective, an IndieWeb world in which people are purchasing services like easy import/export of their data; the ability to move their domain name and URL permalinks from one web host to another; and CMS (content management system) services/platforms/functionalities, represents the successful market mode for our personal data and online identities. Here competition for these sorts of services will not only improve the landscape, but generally increased competition will tend to drive the costs to consumers down. The internet landscape is developed and sophisticated enough and broadly based on shared standards that this mode of service market should easily be able to not only thrive, but innovate.

      At the other end of the spectrum, if our data are viewed as assets in an asset market between Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, et al., it is easy to see that the market has already failed so miserably that one cannot even easily move ones' assets from one silo to another. Social media services don't compete to export or import data because the goal is to trap you and your data and attention there, otherwise they lose. The market corporate social media is really operating in is one for eyeballs and attention to sell advertising, so one will notice a very health, thriving, and innovating market for advertisers. Social media users will easily notice that there is absolutely no regulation in the service portion of the space at all. This only allows the system to continue failing to provide improved or even innovative service to people on their "service". The only real competition in the corporate silo social media space is for eyeballs and participation because the people and their attention are the real product.

      As a result, new players whose goal is to improve the health of the social media space, like the recent entrant Cohost, are far better off creating a standards based service that allows users to register their own domain names and provide a content management service that has easy import and export of their data. This will play into the services market mode which improves outcomes for people. Aligning in any other competition mode that silos off these functions will force them into competition with the existing corporate social services and we already know where those roads lead.

      Those looking for ethical and healthy models of this sort of social media service might look at Manton Reece's micro.blog platform which provides a wide variety of these sorts of data services including data export and taking your domain name with you. If you're unhappy with his service, then it's relatively easy to export your data and move it to another host using WordPress or some other CMS. On the flip side, if you're unhappy with your host and CMS, then it's also easy to move over to micro.blog and continue along just as you had before. Best of all, micro.blog is offering lots of the newest and most innovative web standards including webmention notificatons which enable website-to-website conversations, micropub, and even portions of microsub not to mention some great customer service.

      I like to analogize the internet and social media to competition in the telecom/cellular phone space In America, you have a phone number (domain name) and can then have your choice of service provider (hosting), and a choice of telephone (CMS). Somehow instead of adopting a social media common carrier model, we have trapped ourselves inside of a model that doesn't provide the users any sort of real service or options. It's easy to imagine what it would be like to need your own AT&T account to talk to family on AT&T and a separate T-Mobile account to talk to your friends on T-Mobile because that's exactly what you're doing with social media despite the fact that you're all still using the same internet. Part of the draw was that services like Facebook appeared to be "free" and it's only years later that we're seeing the all too real costs emerge.

      This sort of competition and service provision also goes down to subsidiary layers of the ecosystem. Take for example the idea of writing interface and text editing. There are (paid) services like iA Writer, Ulysses, and Typora which people use to compose their writing. Many people use these specifically for writing blog posts. Companies can charge for these products because of their beauty, simplicity, and excellent user interfaces. Some of them either do or could support the micropub and IndieAuth web standards which allow their users the ability to log into their websites and directly post their saved content from the editor directly to their website. Sure there are also a dozen or so other free micropub clients that also allow this, but why not have and allow competition for beauty and ease of use? Let's say you like WordPress enough, but aren't a fan of the Gutenberg editor. Should you need to change to Drupal or some unfamiliar static site generator to exchange a better composing experience for a dramatically different and unfamiliar back end experience? No, you could simply change your editor client and continue on without missing a beat. Of course the opposite also applies—WordPress could split out Gutenberg as a standalone (possibly paid) micropub client and users could then easily use it to post to Drupal, micro.blog, or other CMSs that support the micropub spec, and many already do.

      Social media should be a service to and for people all the way down to its core. The more companies there are that provide these sorts of services means more competition which will also tend to lure people away from silos where they're trapped for lack of options. Further, if your friends are on services that interoperate and can cross communicate with standards like Webmention from site to site, you no longer need to be on Facebook because "that's where your friends and family all are."

      I have no doubt that we can all get to a healthier place online, but it's going to take companies and startups like Cohost to make better choices in how they frame their business models. Co-ops and non-profits can help here too. I can easily see a co-op adding webmention to their Mastodon site to allow users to see and moderate their own interactions instead of forcing local or global timelines on their constituencies. Perhaps Garon didn't think Webmention was a fit for Mastodon, but this doesn't mean that others couldn't support it. I personally think that Darius Kazemi's Hometown fork of Mastodon which allows "local only" posting a fabulous little innovation while still allowing interaction with a wider readership, including me who reads him in a microsub enabled social reader. Perhaps someone forks Mastodon to use as a social feed reader, but builds in micropub so that instead of posting the reply to a Mastodon account, it's posted to one's IndieWeb capable website which sends a webmention notification to the original post? Opening up competition this way makes lots of new avenues for every day social tools.

      Continuing the same old siloing of our data and online connections is not the way forward. We'll see who stands by their ethics and morals by serving people's interests and not the advertising industry.

  24. May 2022
    1. Songwriters areknown for compiling “hook books” full of lyrics and musical riffs theymay want to use in future songs. Software engineers build “codelibraries” so useful bits of code are easy to access. Lawyers keep“case files” with details from past cases they might want to refer to inthe future. Marketers and advertisers maintain “swipe files” withexamples of compelling ads they might want to draw from

      Nice list of custom names for area specific commonplaces.

    1. We don’t know how many media outlets have been run out of existence because of brand safety technology, nor how many media outlets will never be able to monetize critical news coverage because the issues important to their communities are marked as “unsafe.”
    1. I got sober about four years ago, but the internet knows me as an alcoholic and there is in those many records out there, the fact that I have clicked on alcohol ads. I have bought alcohol online. The internet in a very real way doesn't want me to stop drinking. The fact that they know that I like to drink is actually very lucrative for them. When you think about this, this creates a really interesting ethical conundrum. It's not just that these things are creepy. It's that they're literally holding us to our worst selves, even when we try to change and work our way through the future.

      Effects of Behavioral Advertising when the Behavior Changes

      It is said that the internet doesn't forget. This could be really true for behavioral advertisers who's business it is to sell to your behaviors, whether you've wanted to change them or not.

  25. Mar 2022
    1. First is that it actually lowers paid acquisition costs. It lowers them because the Facebook Ads algorithm rewards engaging advertisements with lower CPMs and lots of distribution. Facebook does this because engaging advertisements are just like engaging posts: they keep people on Facebook. 

      Engaging advertisements on Facebook benefit from lower acquisition costs because the Facebook algorithm rewards more interesting advertisements with lower CPMs and wider distribution. This is done, as all things surveillance capitalism driven, to keep eyeballs on Facebook.

      This isn't too dissimilar to large cable networks that provide free high quality advertising to mass manufacturers in late night slots. The network generally can't sell all of their advertising inventory, particularly in low viewing hours, so they'll offer free or incredibly cheap commercial rates to their bigger buyers (like Coca-Cola or McDonalds, for example) to fill space and have more professional looking advertisements between the low quality advertisements from local mom and pop stores and the "as seen on TV" spots. These higher quality commercials help keep the audience engaged and prevents viewers from changing the channel.

  26. Feb 2022
    1. Aligning editorial mission and business model is critical.

      One of the most complex questions in journalism in the past decade or more is how can one best align editorial mission with the business model? This is particularly difficult because the traditional business model(s) have been shifting in the move to online.

  27. Jan 2022
  28. Dec 2021
    1. The goal of data brokers is to allow consumers to decide which information may be shared with advertisers, then share in some of the revenue generated by its use. These services ask users to sign up on the Web or via an application, connect their social media and Web accounts, then ask them to answer specific questions about their interests. Based on the data provided and collected initially and over time, the brokers will place users into segments, and advertisers can purchase access to data from one or more segments for use in personalized advertising. Each time their data is shared, or advertisers purchase access to a segment in which the user's data has been placed, the user can earn points, rewards, or cash. All the data brokers note that they store their user data on the cloud using a variety of encryption and security protocols, and that the end users with whom they work can opt out of having specific data shared if they so choose.

      The thought being: if a private file is going to be created about me, at least I should be able to cash in on that. How can we know if we are getting a good “price” for selling our behavior data and interests? Is there a divide between those that can afford not to be tracked versus those that need to be tracked as a source of income?

    2. data on demographics that are in limited supply (such as data on Middle Eastern male consumers) is more valuable than demographic data on white millennial women. Similarly, the browsing data of individuals seeking to purchase a Tesla or Ferrari automobile within the next month would be valued more highly by data brokers and advertisers than the data of someone browsing for the best deals on a used Chrysler minivan.

      Demographic data gathered from behavioral advertising systems is not equally valuable. Value can vary by the attributes of the person and by attributes of what that person was doing.

  29. Oct 2021
    1. As early as 1928, Edward Bernays recognized propaganda as a modern instrument to produce productive ends and "help bring order out of chaos".

      Amy Westervelt delves into the history of propaganda to uncover the deceit at the heart of public relations, marketing, advertising, and design in an analysis of the business strategies of oil and gas companies in the podcast, Drilled.

      Westervelt pays particular interest to Edward Bernays.

      “Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, coined the term ‘public relations’ when propaganda started to become a negative term. His specialty was using psychological know-how to manipulate the masses and orchestrate cultural shifts in his clients’ favor (clients like Standard Oil, the American Tobacco Company, and General Motors).”

  30. Aug 2021
  31. May 2021
    1. Despite an initial falloff due to the Covid pandemic, digital advertising spending grew 12.2% year over year in 2020, according to a new report commissioned by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and conducted by PwC.

      Digital Spending grew according to PwC

  32. Apr 2021
    1. We also believe that in order to democratize audio and achieve Spotify’s mission of enabling a million creators to live off of their art, we must work to enable greater choice for creators. This choice becomes increasingly important as audio becomes even easier to create and share.

      Dear Anchor/Spotify, please remember that democratize DOES NOT equal surveillance capitalism. In fact, Facebook and others have shown that doing what you're probably currently planning for the podcasting space will most likely work against democracy.

    2. Thus, the creative freedom of creators is limited.

      And thus draconian methods for making the distribution unnecessarily complicated, siloed, surveillance capitalized, and over-monitized beyond all comprehension are beyond the reach of one or two for profit companies who want to own the entire market like monopolistic giants are similarly limited. (But let's just stick with the creators we're pretending to champion, shall we?)

  33. Mar 2021
  34. Feb 2021
    1. The intellectual cesspool of the inflation truthers

      Powerful Headline (words) from a Washington Post article under Economic Policy. WORDS.....! Words..... When you study Legal Theory you learn that "words" play a significant role in all aspects of social order.

      Controlling the rhetoric with consistent narrative

      This statement simply implies the use of consistent narrative (story) to allow control of the rhetoric. Narrative can be viewed as believable while Rhetoric is a general pejorative. When the rhetoric is mis or dis-information the narrative must be credible.

      Main stream media (MSM) has held a long-term standing across the world as being credible. This standing is eroding. It has eroded considerably over the last 25 years among critical thinkers and the general population has started to take notice.

      I question everything from MSM especially when narrative is duplicated with identical rhetoric across known government media assets. History is a wonderful thing when searching for Truth. Events in historical time periods can be researched, parsed and studied for patterns based on future evidence and outcomes.

      Information "Spin" is real and happens for one purpose, that purpose is to benefit a position, agenda, person, plan, etc., by manipulating (advertising, PR, propaganda) information. Spin is difficult to refute without hard facts. Spin has a short-term shelf life, but that is all it needs to chart a new course, set the "ball" in motion so to say.

      History allows Truth to overcome Spin.

    1. Marketing bullshit(a.k.a. puffery)Exaggerated or false claims by marketersthat amplify the features and performanceof a product or service (Chakraborty &Harbaugh, 2014).In 2000, a court ruled that ads from the PapaJohn’s pizza company stating “Betteringredients. Better Pizza” could not beverified as fact and should be deemedpuffery
    1. This is just one study, of course, and these are complicated social realities. I think it is fair to say that our pundits and social critics can no longer make the easy assumption that the web and the blogosphere are echo-chamber amplifiers. But whether or not this study proves to be accurate, one thing is certain. The force that enables these unlikely encounters between people of different persuasions, the force that makes the web a space of serendipity and discovery, is precisely the open, combinatorial, connective nature of the medium. So when we choose to take our text out of that medium, when we keep our words from being copied, linked, indexed, that’s a choice with real civic consequences that are not to be taken lightly.

      These words certainly didn't take into account the focusing factor that social media algorithms based on surveillance capitalism and attention seeking clicks and engagement would inflict in the coming decade.

    1. famous movie review which describes the Wizard of Oz as: “Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.”

      This is a great example of context collapse. It's factually true, but almost no one who's seen it would describe it this way.

      It's reminiscent of how advertising and politics can twist meaning. Another great example is the horror cut of Disney's Frozen trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIMk1_wwxz8

  35. Dec 2020
    1. website developers and extension authors

      Like, for example, Google having a problem with ad-blockers in Google Chrome. This is an example of why monopolies aren't great; Google makes money selling ads but they also control a browser that most people use. There's a conflict here when the users of the browser install extensions that limit Google's ability to show you ads.

  36. Oct 2020
    1. Notice how print books have remained ad-free in an age when every other available surface carries advertising – something about print books has kept them immune from the disease of advertising.
    1. Refusing advertising is refusing to privilege moneyed speech. The increasing equation of money with speech—that is, those with the most money can be the loudest and most persistent voices in contemporary media—is denied when advertising is refused.
  37. Aug 2020
    1. The ad feels so fresh and uncannily cool—it even samples the Nine Inch Nails song used in “Old Town Road”—that some people could barely believe it represents a politician. Slate called it the most “incomprehensibly thrilling ad” of 2020. “Political ad goes viral for actually being inspiring,” Mashable’s headline read. One man tweeted that it made him want to “march into hell to defend ed markey from dynastic usurpers.” Another gushed that the ad makes him so fired up that “it makes me want to run through a brick wall.”

      But they're ADs! Why do people today see authenticity in something so obviously inauthentic? Is it the natural result of "social media"?

  38. Jul 2020
  39. Jun 2020
    1. Another user, new to quantum computing, told us

      I'm now starting to feel like they're hucksters and trying to sell me on something...

  40. May 2020
    1. Fourth, instead of punishing Aggregators for building products that consumers like to use, antitrust authorities should focus on third-party advertising markets, particularly the role played by Google.

      What will the consequences of shift from third to first party advertising markets be?

  41. Apr 2020
    1. Also see Social Capital's 2018 Annual Letter which noted that 40c of every VC dollar is now spent on Google, Facebook, and Amazon (ads)

      The leaders of more than half a dozen new online retailers all told me they spent the greatest portion of their ad money on Facebook and Instagram.

      “In the start-up-industrial complex, it’s like a systematic transfer of money” from venture-capital firms to start-ups to Facebook.

      Steph Korey, a founder of Away, a luggage company based in New York that opened in 2015, says that when the company was starting, it made $5 for every $1 it spent on Facebook Lookalike ads.

      They began trading their Lookalike groups with other online retailers, figuring that the kind of people who buy one product from social media will probably buy others. This sort of audience sharing is becoming more common on Facebook: There is even a company, TapFwd, that pools together Lookalike groups for various brands, helping them show ads to other groups.

  42. Mar 2020
    1. It wouldn’t mean an end to being able to target ads online. Contextual targeting doesn’t require personal data — and has been used successfully by the likes of non-tracking search engine DuckDuckGo for years (and profitably so). It would just mean an end to the really creepy, stalkerish stuff. The stuff consumers hate — which also serves up horribly damaging societal effects, given that the mass profiling of internet users enables push-button discrimination and exploitation of the vulnerable at vast scale.
  43. Dec 2019
    1. Our Core ValuesWe have adopted and applied many of the ideas from Read the Docs on Ethical Advertising.OpennesswHonestyShare KnowledgeRespect/CollaborationOpen Source
    2. We do not track, profile, or sell information. We do not use cookies. We only show ads that are relevant and meaningful to the users.
  44. Aug 2019
    1. Social media network TikTok is testing an advertising platform that will let advertisers target users across third-party apps, as well as within TikTok.

      As of 2018-08, TikTok has 500M users worldwide. 2/3 are under 30. In the US, more than half are 16-24.

  45. Jul 2019
    1. Instead, ASM operate on the principle that each user has an equal chance to speak (assuming, of course, said users have access to the site and the skills to use it, a point I have to set aside here). Paying for privileged positions, either in sidebars in the interface or in “native advertising” in the social stream, is actively denied.

      This makes me think about the micro.blog "Discover Timeline" which is a form of native advertising to those who are featured on it. While it's meant as an internal tool for others to find interesting people and content to follow, some have argued that it may be biased in the past, though I personally suspect that some of the issue is the smallness of the network at present.

  46. Mar 2019
    1. Working as a junior art director at R/GA has been my dream

      Is it really? I understand the need to hustle and for flattery but agencies change staff and clients at such an alarming rate that he may be in for a rude awakening. We all have dream clients and industry role models that we want to work with but we must remember nothing is constant.

  47. www.adweek.com www.adweek.com
    1. I'm not going to read your articles if you have a paywall! Stop hiding information and let the people see the facts for themselves! I highly recommend using Outline to view all the articles on this site.

    1. “Stupidity is our strength.”

      This is why everyone is obsessed with W+K. Can you honestly get a better tagline? Ads were never meant to be serious, like do you honestly believe a business has your best interests at heart? Transparency and whimsy go a long way...

    1. WorkIt comes first. Creative projects from around the network.WorkingAll about working here, and the people who do.NewsThe latest media coverage + insights from us.AboutWho we are, where to find us.ContactHow to get in touch.Follow us onFacebookTwitterInstagramOfficesPortland224 NW 13th AvePortland, OR 97209USA503 937 7000AmsterdamHerengracht 258-2661016 BV AmsterdamThe Netherlands+31 20 712 6500New York150 Varick StNew York, NY 10013USA917 661 5200Tokyo1-7-13, KamimeguroMeguro-ku, TokyoJapan 153-0051+81 3 5459 2800London16 Hanbury StLondon E1 6QRUK+44 20 7194 7000Shanghai1035 Changle RoadShanghai 200031ChinaDelhi314, DLF South CourtSaketNew Delhi 110017 India+91 11 4200 9595 São PauloRua Natingui, 442 Vila MadalenaSão Paulo – SP 05443-000Brazil+55 11 3937-9400Click to revealPlay VideoPlayCurrent Time 0:09/Duration Time 0:09Loaded: 0%Progress: 100.00%Non-Fullscreen+PDX Nike: Dream Crazier Click to revealPlay VideoPauseCurrent Time 0:00/Duration Time 0:12Loaded: 0%Progress: 3.41%Non-Fullscreen+NYC Bud Light: Ingredients Click to revealPlay VideoPlayCurrent Time 0:11/Duration Time 0:11Loaded: 0%Progress: 100.00%Non-Fullscreen+PDX Coca-Cola: A Coke is a Coke Click to revealPlay VideoPlayCurrent Time 0:05/Duration Time 0:14Loaded: 0%Progress: 38.53%Non-Fullscreen+PDX TurboTax: 2019 Tax Season Campaigns Play VideoPlayCurrent Time 0:00/Duration Time 0:08Loaded: 0%Progress: 6.70%Non-Fullscreen+PDXOld Spice: Men Have Skin TooOld Spice’s Newest Global Brand Ambassador Deon Cole Reminds the World: Men Have Skin Too.View work Back to Back: Fast Company Names W+K #1 Most Innovative In Advertising for the Second Year in a RowFor staying two steps ahead of culture—for Nike, KFC, and more.Read the story Wieden+Kennedy is a global, independent agency that creates strong and provocative relationships between good companies and their customers. +AMSØrsted: Hello To A Better FutureEncouraging the next generation to make green choices.View work Play VideoPlayCurrent Time 0:00/Duration Time 0:10Loaded: 0%Progress: 7.64%Non-Fullscreen+SHNike: DRIBBLE &___DRIBBLE &___ is a reminder that athletes can be much, much more than just athletes. View work From Fast Company: "Wieden+Kennedy just keeps doing it"The largest remaining independent agency strives to make advertising that transcends branding and drives the pop-culture conversation.Read the story Play VideoPlayCurrent Time 0:00/Duration Time 0:14Loaded: 0%Progress: 0.00%Non-Fullscreen+SHNike: Shanghai's Never Done Nike’s “Shanghai's Never Done” celebrates the never-satisfied spirit of Shanghai athletes by centering on a man who seems stuck in the past.View work +LDNDeliveroo: Food FreedomOur debut campaign for Deliveroo celebrates the freedom to have what you want, when you want it, where you want itView work Play VideoPlayCurrent Time 0:00/Duration Time 0:09Loaded: 0%Progress: 0.00%Non-Fullscreen+NYCFord: Built Ford Proud Our first Ford work spotlights the innovation and manufacturing might of America’s favorite automotive brand.View work Play VideoPlayCurrent Time 0:00/Duration Time 0:06Loaded: 0%Progress: 0.00%Non-Fullscreen+PDXNike: Dream CrazyDon’t ask if your dreams are crazy. Ask if they’re crazy enough.View work Play VideoPlayCurrent Time 0:00/Duration Time 0:07Loaded: 0%Progress: 0.00%Non-Fullscreen+AMSInstagram: Parent ToolsA series of online videos showcasing the instant power of Instagram’s tools.View work +AMSThe Case For ChaosW+K Amsterdam's Martin Weigel breaks down the difference between what the corporation wants and what creativity needs.Read the story Play VideoPlayCurrent Time 0:00/Duration Time 0:08Loaded: 0%Progress: 0.00%Non-Fullscreen+SPNike BrasileiragemFor the 2018 World Cup, we celebrated a new generation while throwing back to an iconic spot.View work Play VideoPlayCurrent Time 0:00/Duration Time 0:12Loaded: 0%Progress: 0.00%Non-Fullscreen+LDNThree: Phones Are GoodThree takes on the phone cynics with a new brand campaign.View work Play VideoPlayCurrent Time 0:00/Duration Time 0:06Loaded: 0%Progress: 0.00%Non-Fullscreen+NYCBud Light: Dilly DillyA cultural phenomenon starts with two simple words.View work <div class="video-react-controls-enabled video-react-paused video-react-user-active video-react-workinghover video-react content__preview__image__video_preview " style="width:100%px;height:100%px;" tabindex="-1"><video class="video-react-video content__preview__image__video_preview " muted="" preload="auto" loop="" playsinline="" src="//videos.ctfassets.net/ckso4uqg4vio/4JxXPjosgwW6Iiw4Ea2gCc/ef88449c842f6ff4300dc88cdd3f7578/Shiseido-previewvideo.mp4"></video><div class="video-react-loading-spinner content__preview__image__video_preview "></div><button class="video-react-big-play-button video-react-big-play-button-left content__preview__image__video_preview big-play-button-hide" type="button" aria-live="polite" tabindex="0"><span class="video-react-control-text">Play Video</span></button><div class="video-react-control-bar video-react-control-bar-auto-hide content__preview__image__video_preview "><button class="content__preview__image__video_preview video-react-play-control video-react-control video-react-button video-react-paused" type="button" tabindex="0"><span class="video-react-control-text">Play</span></button><div class="content__preview__image__video_preview video-react-volume-menu-button-horizontal video-react-vol-3 video-react-volume-menu-button video-react-menu-button-inline video-react-control video-react-button video-react-menu-button" role="button" tabindex="0"><div class="video-react-menu"><div class="video-react-menu-content"><div class="content__preview__image__video_preview video-react-slider-horizontal video-react-slider" tabindex="0" aria-label="volume level" aria-valuenow="100.00" aria-valuetext="100.00%" aria-valuemin="0" aria-valuemax="100"><div class="content__preview__image__video_preview video-react-volume-level" style="width:100.00%;"><span class="video-react-control-text"></span></div></div></div></div></div><div class="video-react-current-time video-react-time-control video-react-control content__preview__image__video_preview "><div class="video-react-current-time-display" aria-live="off"><span class="video-react-control-text">Current Time </span>0:00</div></div><div class="video-react-time-control video-react-time-divider content__preview__image__video_preview " dir="ltr"><div><span>/</span></div></div><div class="content__preview__image__video_preview video-react-duration video-react-time-control video-react-control"><div class="video-react-duration-display" aria-live="off"><span class="video-react-control-text">Duration Time </span>0:00</div></div><div class="video-react-progress-control video-react-control content__preview__image__video_preview "><div class="video-react-progress-holder content__preview__image__video_preview video-react-slider-horizontal video-react-slider" tabindex="0" aria-label="video progress bar" aria-valuenow="NaN" aria-valuetext="0:00" aria-valuemin="0" aria-valuemax="100"><div data-current-time="0:00" class="video-react-play-progress video-react-slider-bar" style="width:NaN%;"><span class="video-react-control-text"><span>Progress</span>: NaN%</span></div></div></div><button class="content__preview__image__video_preview video-react-icon-fullscreen video-react-fullscreen-control video-react-control video-react-button video-react-icon" type="button" tabindex="0"><span class="video-react-control-text">Non-Fullscreen</span></button></div></div>+TYOShiseido WASO: All Things Beautiful Come From NatureTo launch a new product for a new audience, we created a digital/mobile campaign that fused nature, technology and art.View work It’s Not (All) Rocket Science: How Brand Mission Guided KFC’s TurnaroundHow the Colonel became the King of branded everything. Read the story <div class="video-react-controls-enabled video-react-paused video-react-user-active video-react-workinghover video-react content__preview__image__video_preview " style="width:100%px;height:100%px;" tabindex="-1"><video class="video-react-video content__preview__image__video_preview " muted="" preload="auto" loop="" playsinline="" src="//videos.ctfassets.net/ckso4uqg4vio/gRmHQGU4QoYIKooaUsCGY/4a4ef51b1efa473aef02399ab7067d64/Nike-dadading-previewvideo.mp4"></video><div class="video-react-loading-spinner content__preview__image__video_preview "></div><button class="video-react-big-play-button video-react-big-play-button-left content__preview__image__video_preview big-play-button-hide" type="button" aria-live="polite" tabindex="0"><span class="video-react-control-text">Play Video</span></button><div class="video-react-control-bar video-react-control-bar-auto-hide content__preview__image__video_preview "><button class="content__preview__image__video_preview video-react-play-control video-react-control video-react-button video-react-paused" type="button" tabindex="0"><span class="video-react-control-text">Play</span></button><div class="content__preview__image__video_preview video-react-volume-menu-button-horizontal video-react-vol-3 video-react-volume-menu-button video-react-menu-button-inline video-react-control video-react-button video-react-menu-button" role="button" tabindex="0"><div class="video-react-menu"><div class="video-react-menu-content"><div class="content__preview__image__video_preview video-react-slider-horizontal video-react-slider" tabindex="0" aria-label="volume level" aria-valuenow="100.00" aria-valuetext="100.00%" aria-valuemin="0" aria-valuemax="100"><div class="content__preview__image__video_preview video-react-volume-level" style="width:100.00%;"><span class="video-react-control-text"></span></div></div></div></div></div><div class="video-react-current-time video-react-time-control video-react-control content__preview__image__video_preview "><div class="video-react-current-time-display" aria-live="off"><span class="video-react-control-text">Current Time </span>0:00</div></div><div class="video-react-time-control video-react-time-divider content__preview__image__video_preview " dir="ltr"><div><span>/</span></div></div><div class="content__preview__image__video_preview video-react-duration video-react-time-control video-react-control"><div class="video-react-duration-display" aria-live="off"><span class="video-react-control-text">Duration Time </span>0:00</div></div><div class="video-react-progress-control video-react-control content__preview__image__video_preview "><div class="video-react-progress-holder content__preview__image__video_preview video-react-slider-horizontal video-react-slider" tabindex="0" aria-label="video progress bar" aria-valuenow="NaN" aria-valuetext="0:00" aria-valuemin="0" aria-valuemax="100"><div data-current-time="0:00" class="video-react-play-progress video-react-slider-bar" style="width:NaN%;"><span class="video-react-control-text"><span>Progress</span>: NaN%</span></div></div></div><button class="content__preview__image__video_preview video-react-icon-fullscreen video-react-fullscreen-control video-react-control video-react-button video-react-icon" type="button" tabindex="0"><span class="video-react-control-text">Non-Fullscreen</span></button></div></div>+DLNike: DaDaDingWe made a music video to show the power of women in sport. And it was FIERCE. AS. (You Know)View work +NYCLyft: StaycationGetting New Yorkers off their block and into an exotic (local) destination.View work The work comes f |WorkWorkingNewsAboutContactPortland224 NW 13th AvePortland, OR 97209USA503 937 7000New BusinessMaggie Jenningsmaggie.jennings@wk.com1 503-937-7838AmsterdamHerengracht 258-2661016 BV AmsterdamThe Netherlands+31 20 712 6500New BusinessBen Proutben.prout@wk.com+316 52 86 71 49New York150 Varick StNew York, NY 10013USA917 661 5200New BusinessJacqueline Steelejacqueline.steele@wk.com1 917-661-5265Tokyo1-7-13, KamimeguroMeguro-ku, TokyoJapan 153-0051+81 3 5459 2800New BusinessRyan Fisherryan.fisher@wk.com81-80-4753-8114London16 Hanbury StLondon E1 6QRUK+44 20 7194 7000New BusinessZoe Mitchellwklondon.newbiz@wk.com+44 207 194 7000Shanghai1035 Changle RoadShanghai 200031ChinaNew BusinessBryan Tilsonbryan.tilson@wk.com86 21 5158 3975Delhi314, DLF South CourtSaketNew Delhi 110017 India+91 11 4200 9595 New BusinessGautham Narayanannewbizdelhi@wk.com+91 11 4200 9595São PauloRua Natingui, 442 Vila MadalenaSão Paulo – SP 05443-000Brazil+55 11 3937-9400New BusinessFernanda Antonellifernanda.antonelli@wk.com+55 11 3937 9401© Wieden Kennedy 2018 · Legal StuffFollow us onFacebookTwitterInstagram

      I applied for an internship here 3 years in a row after graduating from portfolio school. Never got an interview. This is me failing harder.

  48. Feb 2019
    1. But I think the secret is that somebody else does his flow for him. I mean, what are PR and advertising but flow, bought and paid for?
  49. Nov 2018
    1. The way we choose what to buy, like the way we choose how to vote, will never be logical. Trying to make it so has created an environment in which our basest impulses are relentlessly stimulated and amplified. The philosopher Gilles Deleuze once remarked, “It is not the slumber of reason that engenders monsters, but vigilant and insomniac rationality.” If ever there was a creation of insomniac rationality it is the 21st-century advertising business. Its monsters roam the planet.
    2. “Knowing that the seller has faith in their product is a hugely valuable piece of information,” he says. “In luxury goods, for instance, the ad says almost nothing; the cost of the ad almost everything.” Biologists regard the peacock’s tail as an expensive and so unfakeable signal of fitness – a sexual status symbol.
    3. “Flowers are ads. Peacocks’ tails are ads.” Rory Sutherland, vice-chairman of Ogilvy & Mather, and the ad industry’s most vigorous defender, is in full flow over lunch at his agency’s offices in Blackfriars. “One reason I’m not predicting the death of advertising any time soon is that you can see how important it is in nature. A flower is basically a weed with an advertising budget.”
  50. Aug 2018
    1. Google also says location records stored in My Activity are used to target ads. Ad buyers can target ads to specific locations — say, a mile radius around a particular landmark — and typically have to pay more to reach this narrower audience. While disabling “Web & App Activity” will stop Google from storing location markers, it also prevents Google from storing information generated by searches and other activity. That can limit the effectiveness of the Google Assistant, the company’s digital concierge. Sean O’Brien, a Yale Privacy Lab researcher with whom the AP shared its findings, said it is “disingenuous” for Google to continuously record these locations even when users disable Location History. “To me, it’s something people should know,” he said.
  51. Jul 2018
    1. The new organs process this enormous amount of information to break you down into categories, which are sometimes innocuous like, “Listens to Spotify” or “Trendy Moms”, but can also be more sensitive, identifying ethnicity and religious affiliation, or invasively personal, like “Lives away from family”. More than this, the new organs are being integrated with increasingly sophisticated algorithms, so they can generate predictive portraits of you, which they then sell to advertisers who can target products that you don’t even know you want yet. 
    2. Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne, two Brooklyn-based artists whose work explores the intersections of technology and society, have been hearing a lot of stories like mine. In June, they launched a website called New Organs, which collects first-hand accounts of these seemingly paranoiac moments. The website is comprised of a submission form that asks you to choose from a selection of experiences, like “my phone is eavesdropping on me” to “I see ads for things I dream about.” You’re then invited to write a few sentences outlining your experience and why you think it happened to you.
  52. May 2018
    1. But advertising and design are fundamentally different businesses: in the world of advertising, user experiences are typically a loss leader to sell media buying services that are much more reliable and higher margin. Design, by contrast, is studio-driven, not account-driven—and does not benefit from the reliable, recurring revenue streams of ad spends. Ideas are not a loss-leader, they are the core value for design. __This difference may not be visible to corporate buyers, but it is quite meaningful to creative talent, the lifeblood of both industries. If you walk into a meeting in which you are pitched fully-formed concepts as part of the sales process, you are probably not talking to a design firm. __
  53. Apr 2018
    1. One source speculated that Australia is the test market for wider consolidation across the WPP portfolio, but questioned: “Will it only end when there are no brands left?” “What will WPP look like in two years? No one in senior leadership can answer that.” WPP as a holding company is facing serious challenges and boss Martin Sorrell has been upfront about the financial pressures it’s under from clients who are decreasing their marketing budget. As a result, WPP seems to be working hard to claw its way back to the top of the advertising food chain.
    2. It comprises teams specialising in seven key production disciplines including: design, photography, TV and post, web design and build, dynamic digital campaigns, social content, digital and print production and management.
    1. As production increasingly becomes a more important and profitable component in the creative advertising equation, WPP wants to come as close as possible to providing everything for its clients—with Hogarth serving as the proverbial kitchen sink for both Ogilvy and Grey.
  54. Feb 2018
    1. as clients' marketing budgets decrease and agency profit margins feel the squeeze.
    2. One boss allegedly followed a round of layoffs by warning employees that all production work needed to remain in-house if they wanted to keep their jobs, in part because production is the agency's only profitable department.
    3. All major agency holding companies have launched their own production and postproduction units in recent years as part of what one agency veteran called "a revenue grab." In some cases, they have publicized this information, but the new divisions largely operate under the radar despite employing hundreds of people. "This isn't a threat to high-end production companies," said one source who has worked in that industry for years, "But it will wipe out the whole middle range of independent companies."
  55. Nov 2017
    1. The researchers also found that adolescents’ materialism was highest when advertising spending made up a greater percentage of the U.S. economy.
  56. Aug 2017
    1. So Facebook knows your phone ID and can add it to your Facebook ID. It puts that together with the rest of your online activity: not just every site you’ve ever visited, but every click you’ve ever made – the Facebook button tracks every Facebook user, whether they click on it or not. Since the Facebook button is pretty much ubiquitous on the net, this means that Facebook sees you, everywhere. Now, thanks to its partnerships with the old-school credit firms, Facebook knew who everybody was, where they lived, and everything they’d ever bought with plastic in a real-world offline shop.[4]​4 All this information is used for a purpose which is, in the final analysis, profoundly bathetic. It is to sell you things via online ads.The ads work on two models. In one of them, advertisers ask Facebook to target consumers from a particular demographic – our thirty-something bourbon-drinking country music fan, or our African American in Philadelphia who was lukewarm about Hillary. But Facebook also delivers ads via a process of online auctions, which happen in real time whenever you click on a website. Because every website you’ve ever visited (more or less) has planted a cookie on your web browser, when you go to a new site, there is a real-time auction, in millionths of a second, to decide what your eyeballs are worth and what ads should be served to them, based on what your interests, and income level and whatnot, are known to be. This is the reason ads have that disconcerting tendency to follow you around, so that you look at a new telly or a pair of shoes or a holiday destination, and they’re still turning up on every site you visit weeks later. This was how, by chucking talent and resources at the problem, Facebook was able to turn mobile from a potential revenue disaster to a great hot steamy geyser of profit.
    2. Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.
  57. May 2017
    1. clever advertising man" to help boost consumption. In the case of ice, consumption soared

      Advertising schemes promoting ice in the early 1900s built the foundation for household refrigeration as technology became more advanced.

  58. Apr 2017
    1. Marketers would prefer to have their own predictive marketing platforms, helping them collect and activate their own proprietary data. Enterprise technology companies want that future as well. They want to be the ones to sell and provision those tech platforms, integrating and packaging them with all of the other systems they sell into the enterprise, from CRM to call center management to finance and sales force automation. Quite naturally, they worry that it will be easier for Google and Facebook to add their own CRM and related systems than it will be for them to replicate Google and Facebook’s digital marketing system.Agencies? They just want to keep themselves in the middle. Whether as consultants, media brokers, system integrators or owners of syndicated data, agencies just want to stay relevant and find ways to reverse their declining margins.

      That is most certainly their wishlist. But it overlooks the reason why Google and Facebook get all the ad dollars in the first place: they have all the users & their data. That's why most advertisers will have to play by their rules as the chances to succeed with their own offerings aren't great.

      Telcos/ISPs meanwhile, particularly Verizon, are to watch indeed (The new FCC rules play right into their hands as well). Since they own many users & their data, they are a force to be reckoned with. But: ISPs aren't global players and regulated differently in each country.

  59. Mar 2017
    1. David Pemsel, the Guardian’s chief executive, wrote to Google to say that it was “completely unacceptable” for its advertising to be misused in this way.
    2. The use of programmatic trading, which automates the process of buying and selling advertising online , is becoming increasingly controversial amid concerns that it both hurts media revenues and supports extremist material.
    3. The Guardian has withdrawn all its online advertising from Google and YouTube after it emerged that its ads were being inadvertently placed next to extremist material.
  60. Dec 2016
    1. Selling user data should be illegal. And the customer data a company is allowed to collect and store should be very limited.

      Under the guidance of Jared Kushner, a senior campaign advisor and son-in-law of President-Elect Trump, Parscale quietly began building his own list of Trump supporters. Trump’s revolutionary database, named Project Alamo, contains the identities of 220 million people in the United States, and approximately 4,000 to 5,000 individual data points about the online and offline life of each person. Funded entirely by the Trump campaign, this database is owned by Trump and continues to exist.

      Trump’s Project Alamo database was also fed vast quantities of external data, including voter registration records, gun ownership records, credit card purchase histories, and internet account identities. The Trump campaign purchased this data from certified Facebook marketing partners Experian PLC, Datalogix, Epsilon, and Acxiom Corporation. (Read here for instructions on how to remove your information from the databases of these consumer data brokers.)

    2. Trump's campaign used carefully targeted negative ads to suppress voter turnout.

      With Project Alamo as ammunition, the Trump digital operations team covertly executed a massive digital last-stand strategy using targeted Facebook ads to ‘discourage’ Hillary Clinton supporters from voting. The Trump campaign poured money and resources into political advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, the Facebook Audience Network, and Facebook data-broker partners.

      “We have three major voter suppression operations under way,” a senior Trump official explained to reporters from BusinessWeek. They’re aimed at three groups Clinton needs to win overwhelmingly: idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans.”

    3. 100,000 personalized collections of lies.

      Parscale also deployed software to optimize the design and messaging of Trump’s Facebook ads. Describing one such test, the Wall Street Journal reporter Christopher Mims writes that “one day in August, his campaign sprayed ads at Facebook users that led to 100,000 different webpages, each micro-targeted at a different segment of voters.” In total, Trump’s digital team built or generated more than 100,000 distinct pieces of creative content.

    1. The ubiquitous social network not only allows advertisers to target users by their interests or background, it also gives advertisers the ability to exclude specific groups it calls “Ethnic Affinities.”

      why aren't we seeing more about this in the news?? How is this not ILLEGAL???

  61. Jun 2016
    1. agnotology - the study of willful acts to spread confusion and deceit, usually to sell a product or win favor. (Coined by Robert Proctor of Stanford University.)

      • tobacco companies
      • climate-change deniers
      • politicians

      Withholding evidence and outright lying are just the two most obvious tactics. They also take advantage of people's desire to be reasonable, by claiming there are two sides to a topic that doesn't actually have any reasonable opposition -- the "balanced debate" scam. And they influence people by conflating the main issue with others -- personal liberty, religious beliefs, capitalism vs socialism.

  62. Apr 2016
    1. JavaScript creator Brendan Eich is working on a browser that blocks tracking, and replaces ads with less obtrusive ones. Websites can sign up to get a cut of the income from those ads. They'll also have a way for users to pay to visit sites ad-free.

      http://brave.com/<br> https://github.com/brave<br> https://twitter.com/brave

      It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Naturally, those obtrusive advertisers won't like it. I'd love it if sites I visit often could give me ads for stuff I might actually buy, especially if they received a generous cut of each sale.

  63. Feb 2016
    1. PageFair, which sells services to publishers to measure and attempt to counteract adblocking and contributed to the report, has estimated that total lost revenue from adblocking grew from $5.8bn to $10.7bn between 2014 and 2015 in the US, $1.6bn to $3.6bn over the same period in the UK.

      This seems to be talking about lost revenue to publishers, not products and services being advertised.

  64. Jan 2016
    1. Everything we do to make it harder to create a website or edit a web page, and harder to learn to code by viewing source, promotes that consumerist vision of the web. Pretending that one needs a team of professionals to put simple articles online will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

      Humorous talk on website bloat by Maciej Cegłowski, creator of the Pinboard bookmarking service.

  65. Dec 2015
    1. Huge follower counts on YouTube and social media DO NOT easily translate to income. And those followers expect you to be "real" -- so they are hostile to advertising and sponsored content.

      Do you own a business? It might pay to offer a salary to the producers of a YouTube channel that reaches your target audience -- in exchange for low-profile "brought to you by" links and mentions that won't offend that audience.

      https://twitter.com/JBUshow<br> https://twitter.com/gabydunn

  66. Aug 2015
    1. The problem is scale. A larger, general-interest site can't be built purely atop longform, because longform takes time — both for writers to produce and readers to read. Therefore, as both Buzzfeed and Gawker realized early on, well-done longform could be the steak, but it couldn't be the meal.

      Why is it a problem if things take longer to read and write?

      I suspect the answer has to do with the monetization terms in play. Too much of advertising is still based on page views rather than time on page. As a result, it's extremely beneficial to have users return to the site daily and spend 15 minutes reading 5 stupid listicles rather than returning to the site once a week to spend an hour and a half reading a couple articles. This also motivates the obnoxious pagination common on news sites.

    1. You have these weird extreme emotions like jealousies and affections for things that no normal person would, so I find them really interesting and almost beautiful in that way, like surrealist films.
  67. Jun 2015
    1. Although it currently shows Google AdSense ads and Taboola’s content marketing, Ottman said those will soon go away. Point-selling will be the main revenue source.

      I find Taboola to be so awful that I question the judgment of these people for ever having used it.

  68. Sep 2014
    1. Starts off on a difficult foot by attempting to deny common conceptions about how advertising works, and even legitimizes their function, but comes full circle to strong indictment of the insidiousness of brand ubiquity.

    2. So if an ad works by inception, we should expect the value (to the advertiser) to scale linearly with the size of the audience. On the other hand, if an ad works by cultural imprinting, we should expect its value (to the advertiser) to scale more than linearly with the size of the audience.
    3. Cultural imprinting is the mechanism whereby an ad, rather than trying to change our minds individually, instead changes the landscape of cultural meanings — which in turn changes how we are perceived by others when we use a product. Whether you drink Corona or Heineken or Budweiser "says" something about you. But you aren't in control of that message; it just sits there, out in the world, having been imprinted on the broader culture by an ad campaign.

      Yes! Whence the emotional inception. If you don't buy that product that says you're super cool you are then filled with anxiety about whether you're cool. Etc.

      What's being described here isn't some other way in which advertising works other than emotional inception, it's the mechanism of that inception.

    4. The same way an engagement ring is an honest token of a man's commitment to his future spouse, an expensive ad campaign is an honest token of a company's commitment to its product line.

      Gah! Awful.

      As soon as you think such a signal is valuable, it becomes a tool of deception.

      That's why we've seen some backlash against flashy promotion toward a nostalgic, faux low budget, "authentic" aesthetic.

    5. If Disney were ever to violate this trust — by putting too much violence in its movies, for instance — consumers would get angry and (at the margin) buy fewer of Disney's products.

      How does confirmation bias play into this? Can Disney violate that trust with some margin of comfort? If consumers are (as here assumed) primed to receive family friendly entertainment they are less likely to notice when that expectation is violated than when they are when it's confirmed.

    6. First, a lot of ads work simply by raising awareness. These ads are essentially telling customers, "FYI, product X exists. Here's how it works. It's available if you need it." Liquid Draino, for example, is a product that thrives on simple awareness, because drains don't clog all that frequently, and if you don't know what Liquid Draino is and what it does, you won't think to use it. But this mechanism is pervasive. Almost every ad works, at least in part, by informing or reminding customers about a product. And if it makes a memorable impression, even better.

      A central pillar of my hatred for advertising is the fact that awareness does work and the ability to raise awareness is strongly correlated with marketing budget. Products therefore beat competition by virtue of starting with larger advertising budgets, not be being better products.