Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Transparency in agency relationships is a growing issue. Pivotal analyst Brian Wieser downgraded ratings on the four major agency holding companies on Monday, warning that the growing noise over agency kickbacks has caused him to “reassess some of our views on long-term holding company growth.” In a note to investors, he added that since marketers are…
With the major investigation into media buying kickbacks in the USA by the ANA about to conclude, and our own ISBA recently making headlines about the poor state of media agencies in the UK, Mark Ritson reviews what we have learned so far. Just over a year ago Jon Mandel, the former CEO of media…
Advertising agencies in the US have been systematically padding their profits by using non-transparent practices such as taking rebates from media companies and not disclosing them to clients, according to the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), which released the highly anticipated findings of an eight-month investigation into the sector on Tuesday. The ANA — which…
Jon Mandel Media agency rebates and kickbacks, long thought to be something that happened overseas — or only in pockets of the U.S. market — are actually widespread, said former Mediacom CEO Jon Mandel, so much so that it caused him to leave the agency business. Mr. Mandel made his remarks in a blistering presentation…
Agencies are not transparent about their actions. Agencies recommend media that is off-strategy when it works for their gain. Agencies accrue media earned by advertisers’ spending and resell it to other advertisers. Agencies demand pay-for-play from vendors in order to be recommended, and cross the line in partnership relationships. These are among the claims made…
RJI Futures Lab; Skye Gould/Business Insider The man tasked with overseeing Gizmodo Media Group after the demise of Gawker.com says he never regularly read the site in the first place. “I’m well past the demographic they were aiming for,” CEO Raju Narisetti said in an interview. “If you ask me if it was a place…
Genius, which raised $56.9 million on the promise that it would one day annotate the entire internet, has been losing its minds. In January, the company quietly laid off a quarter of its staff, with the bulk of the cuts coming from the engineering department. In a post on the Genius blog at the time,…
Abstract This article problematizes the relationship between clicks and audience interests. Clicking patterns are often seen as evidence that news users are mostly interested in junk news, leading to concerns about the state of journalism and the implications for society. Asking and observing how 56 users actually browse news and what clicking and not clicking…
Joe Ricketts. Photo: AP John Ness is out as editor-in-chief of DNAinfo.com, sources in the newsroom have told Jezebel. Ness did not return a request for comment about the circumstances of his leaving. We do know, however, that members of DNAinfo’s most senior editorial staff were laid off in the run-up to the announcement earlier…
Illustration by Jim Cooke Successful union campaigns have flourished across the digital media industry over the past year and a half. Few have run into more anti-union pushback than the one currently happening at Thrillist. And employees are pissed. On February 15, editorial staffers at the lifestyle site Thrillist announced that they were joining the…