advertising
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Without aligning incentives, we can’t kill fake news or save journalism
It’s time to move past the toxic and destructive business called adtech: surveillance-based advertising. Adtech is the Agent Smith of digital advertising: a rogue programmatic approach to digital advertising that rationalizes tracking people like marked animals. Today adtech is the main business model for nearly all of online publishing, including nearly all the news sites reporting endlessly and ironically on how… Continue reading
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How True Advertising Can Save Journalism From Drowning in a Sea of Content
Journalism is in a world of hurt because it has been marginalized by a new business model that requires maximizing “content” instead. That model is called adtech. We can see adtech’s effects in The New York Times’ In New Jersey, Only a Few Media Watchdogs Are Left, by David Chen. His prime example is the Newark… Continue reading
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Is the online advertising bubble finally starting to pop?
I started calling online advertising a bubble in 2008. I made “The Advertising Bubble” a chapter in The Intention Economy in 2012. I’ve been unpacking what I figure ought to be obvious (but isn’t) in 52 posts and articles (so far) in the Adblock War Series. This will be the 53rd. And it ain’t happened yet. But, now… Continue reading
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The most important event, ever
IIW XX, the 20th Internet Identity Workshop, comes at a critical inflection point in the history of VRM: Vendor Relationship Management, the only business movement working toward giving you both independence from the silos and walled gardens of the world; and better means for engaging with every business in the world — your way, rather… Continue reading
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Thoughts on tracking-based advertising
Yesterday @davidweinberger and I were guests on screen at a @commongroundmcr session in Manchester, hosted by Julian Tait (@Julianlstar) and Ian Forrester (@cubicgarden). We talked for a long time about a lot of stuff (here’s a #cmngrnd search featuring some of it); but what seems to have struck the Chord of Controversy was something I blabbed: “Tracking-based advertising is creepy… Continue reading
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Advertising in the pits
There is an ad running during the NCAA basketball playoffs that’s so creepy and surreal that I decided to take some screen shots of it, as a kind of public service to the company spending money on it. The scene is a guy’s hairy armpit. (Do they have armpit models? Guess so.) As if this… Continue reading
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Building better markets. Not just better marketing.
The comment thread in my last post was lengthened by Seth Finkelstein‘s characterization of me as “basically a PR person”. I didn’t like that, and a helpful back-and-forth between the two of us (and others) followed. In the midst of the exchange I said I would unpack some of my points in a fresh post… Continue reading
“David Weinberger”, advertising, Allen Searls, Berkman, Berkman Center, blueberries, Carpenter, Chris Locke, Colette Searls, CXO, Durham, Eleanor Searls, fcc, George Washington Bridge, google, Göteburg, Hodskins Simone & Searls, Malmö, marketing, Mom, Palo Alto, paradise, Pop, PR, projectvrm, restaurtants, Ricke Levine, Searls, Seth Finkelstein, The Searls Group, Todd Carpenter, twitter, Wanigan, WWII -
Geology vs. Weather
I love this: … and I hope the good (or evil, depending on your perspective) folks at Despair.com don’t mind my promoting their best t-shirt yet. (If it helps, I just ordered one.) You’ll notice that blogging isn’t in the diagram (though Despair does feature it in four other purchasable forms). I bring that up… Continue reading
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Because advertising encourages Alzheimer’s
I dunno why the New York Times appeared on my doorstep this morning, along with our usual Boston Globe (Sox lost, plus other news) — while our Wall Street Journal did not. (Was it a promo? There was no response envelope or anything. And none of the neighbors gets a paper at all, so it… Continue reading
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Blogging .101
Hanging in The Cities on (what wants to be) a Spring Day (a little snow still on the ground), talking deep blogging trash with Sharon Franquemont and Mary Jo Kreitzer. They’re both new to the practice (which isn’t quite a discipline, at least in my case). So bear with me as I show off some… Continue reading
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After the advertising bubble bursts
Thesis #74 of The Cluetrain Manifesto says, “We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.” We wrote that in 1999, when everybody thought that advertising was going to be THE model for businesses on the Internet. The crash came less than a year later. Then the next bubble came, and this time everybody thought (surprise!)… Continue reading
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The madness of man
(This post began as a response to this comment by Julian Bond, in response to this post about Mad Men. When it got too long I decided to move it here.) Smoking and drinking were standard back then. “Widespread” doesn’t cover it. They were nearly universal. It’s easy to forget that Industry won WWII, and… Continue reading