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Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business
An intimate and profound reckoning with the changes buffeting the $2 trillion global advertising and marketing business from the perspective of its most powerful players, by the bestselling author of Googled
Advertising and marketing touches on every corner of our lives, and is the invisible fuel powering almost all media. Complain about it though we might, without it the world would be a darker place. And of all the industries wracked by change in the digital age, few have been turned on its head as dramatically as this one has. We are a long way from the days of Don Draper; as Mad Men is turned into Math Men (and women--though too few), as an instinctual art is transformed into a science, the old lions and their kingdoms are feeling real fear, however bravely they might roar.
Frenemies is Ken Auletta's reckoning with an industry under existential assault. He enters the rooms of the ad world's most important players, some of them business partners, some adversaries, many "frenemies," a term whose ubiquitous use in this industry reveals the level of anxiety, as former allies become competitors, and accusations of kickbacks and corruption swirl. We meet the old guard, including Sir Martin Sorrell, the legendary head of WPP, the world's largest ad agency holding company; while others play nice with Facebook and Google, he rants, some say Lear-like, out on the heath. There is Irwin Gotlieb, maestro of the media agency GroupM, the most powerful media agency, but like all media agencies it is staring into the headlights as ad buying is more and more done by machine in the age of Oracle and IBM. We see the world from the vantage of its new powers, like Carolyn Everson, Facebook's head of Sales, and other brash and scrappy creatives who are driving change, as millennials and others who disdain ads as an interruption employ technology to zap them. We also peer into the future, looking at what is replacing traditional advertising. And throughout we follow the industry's peerless matchmaker, Michael Kassan, whose company, MediaLink, connects all these players together, serving as the industry's foremost power broker, a position which feasts on times of fear and change.
Frenemies is essential reading, not simply because of what it says about this world, but because of the potential consequences: the survival of media as we know it depends on the money generated by advertising and marketing--revenue that is in peril in the face of technological changes and the fraying trust between the industry's key players.
Advertising and marketing touches on every corner of our lives, and is the invisible fuel powering almost all media. Complain about it though we might, without it the world would be a darker place. And of all the industries wracked by change in the digital age, few have been turned on its head as dramatically as this one has. We are a long way from the days of Don Draper; as Mad Men is turned into Math Men (and women--though too few), as an instinctual art is transformed into a science, the old lions and their kingdoms are feeling real fear, however bravely they might roar.
Frenemies is Ken Auletta's reckoning with an industry under existential assault. He enters the rooms of the ad world's most important players, some of them business partners, some adversaries, many "frenemies," a term whose ubiquitous use in this industry reveals the level of anxiety, as former allies become competitors, and accusations of kickbacks and corruption swirl. We meet the old guard, including Sir Martin Sorrell, the legendary head of WPP, the world's largest ad agency holding company; while others play nice with Facebook and Google, he rants, some say Lear-like, out on the heath. There is Irwin Gotlieb, maestro of the media agency GroupM, the most powerful media agency, but like all media agencies it is staring into the headlights as ad buying is more and more done by machine in the age of Oracle and IBM. We see the world from the vantage of its new powers, like Carolyn Everson, Facebook's head of Sales, and other brash and scrappy creatives who are driving change, as millennials and others who disdain ads as an interruption employ technology to zap them. We also peer into the future, looking at what is replacing traditional advertising. And throughout we follow the industry's peerless matchmaker, Michael Kassan, whose company, MediaLink, connects all these players together, serving as the industry's foremost power broker, a position which feasts on times of fear and change.
Frenemies is essential reading, not simply because of what it says about this world, but because of the potential consequences: the survival of media as we know it depends on the money generated by advertising and marketing--revenue that is in peril in the face of technological changes and the fraying trust between the industry's key players.
368 pages, Hardcover
Published June 5, 2018
278 people are currently reading
1405 people want to read
About the author
Ken Auletta
30 books98 followersKen Auletta has written Annals of Communications columns and profiles for The New Yorker magazine since 1992. He is the author of eleven books, including five national bestsellers: Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way; Greed And Glory On Wall Street: The Fall of The House of Lehman; The Highwaymen: Warriors of the Information Super Highway; World War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies; and Googled, The End of the World As We Know It, which was published in November of 2009.
Auletta has won numerous journalism honors. He has been chosen a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library, and one of the 20th Century's top 100 business journalists by a distinguished national panel of peers.
For two decades Auletta has been a national judge of the Livingston Awards for journalists under thirty-five. He has been a Trustee and member of the Executive Committee of the Public Theatre/New York Shakespeare Festival. He was a member of the Columbia Journalism School Task Force assembled by incoming college President Lee Bollinger to help reshape the curriculum. He has served as a Pulitzer Prize juror and a Trustee of the Nightingale-Bamford School. He was twice a Trustee of PEN, the international writers organization. He is a member of the New York Public Library's Emergency Committee for the Research Libraries, of the Author's Guild, PEN, and of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Auletta grew up on Coney Island in Brooklyn, where he attended public schools. He graduated with a B.S. from the State University College at Oswego, N.Y., and received an M.A. in political science from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.
Auletta has won numerous journalism honors. He has been chosen a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library, and one of the 20th Century's top 100 business journalists by a distinguished national panel of peers.
For two decades Auletta has been a national judge of the Livingston Awards for journalists under thirty-five. He has been a Trustee and member of the Executive Committee of the Public Theatre/New York Shakespeare Festival. He was a member of the Columbia Journalism School Task Force assembled by incoming college President Lee Bollinger to help reshape the curriculum. He has served as a Pulitzer Prize juror and a Trustee of the Nightingale-Bamford School. He was twice a Trustee of PEN, the international writers organization. He is a member of the New York Public Library's Emergency Committee for the Research Libraries, of the Author's Guild, PEN, and of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Auletta grew up on Coney Island in Brooklyn, where he attended public schools. He graduated with a B.S. from the State University College at Oswego, N.Y., and received an M.A. in political science from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 77 reviews
June 11, 2018
A major disappointment. I was hoping this book would spend more time shedding light on the trends underlying the massive shifts transforming the media world, but alas was not to be. Just about everything shared in this book is common knowledge to everyone in the industry, so perhaps the target for this book is the general public. More than anything, the book conveys that Ken Auletta has made friends with some of the most influential folks in the media industry, from MediaLink/Kassan and Millard, to facebook/Everson, to WPP/Sorrell, to Publicis/Levy, Omnicom/Wren and a host of other luminaries. And when you take a few steps back after reading the book, you can't help but feel it is first and foremost an homage to Michael Kassan and MediaLink. Now Michael and MediaLink deserve all the love Auletta bestows upon them, but that doesn't make for an informative book. If you want a more compelling assessment of the media world, definitely go to Andrew Essex's "The End of Advertising" or Tim Wu's "The Attention Merchants".
March 12, 2020
This was just something I picked up as I was coming off of a lot of fiction and fantasy and wanted something different. Now I have nothing to do with any part of the Advertising and Marketing industry and I am firmly the consumer who is targeted with the ads and I use Adblockers in my browsers to block off those pesky ads and then pay for Youtube Premium and Netflix to not watch Ads during my videos. And then I go to youtube and watch random ads but that's more for entertainment. Because I have absolutely no stake in the game it was just an observational book for me which showed the way the modern tech companies are encroaching upon and leading the charge in the ad business. Well so, in the end, all I can say is good to know after all the more you know the better.
People who don't read generally ask me my reasons for reading. Simply put I just love reading and so to that end I have made it my motto to just Keep on Reading. I love to read everything except for Self Help books but even those once in a while. I read almost all the genre but YA, Fantasy, Biographies are the most. My favorite series is, of course, Harry Potter but then there are many more books that I just adore. I have bookcases filled with books which are waiting to be read so can't stay and spend more time in this review, so remember I loved reading this and love reading more, you should also read what you love and then just Keep on Reading.
People who don't read generally ask me my reasons for reading. Simply put I just love reading and so to that end I have made it my motto to just Keep on Reading. I love to read everything except for Self Help books but even those once in a while. I read almost all the genre but YA, Fantasy, Biographies are the most. My favorite series is, of course, Harry Potter but then there are many more books that I just adore. I have bookcases filled with books which are waiting to be read so can't stay and spend more time in this review, so remember I loved reading this and love reading more, you should also read what you love and then just Keep on Reading.
August 7, 2018
I’ve always enjoyed Ken Auletta’s books. He is one smart author and always provides deep insights into complex topics. This book dives deep into the world of media, entertainment and advertising.
Seismic changes are happening as consumers seek to escape the legacy practice of interruption and annoyance marketing. Subscription services such as Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Prime are booming. More people than ever are willing to pay money each month just to escape the din of advertising’s assault on the senses.
This book is packed with amazing insights. Auletta reveals the many trends that are morphing the advertising landscape and the many new players eagerly seeking to carve out a share of the profits.
I learned a lot, but this book took some real work to get through. Auletta’s other books did a great job of methodically guiding customers through a story. He masterfully made complicated topics understandable.
Unfortunately, this book was rather disjointed. It is more a random collection of thoughts and observations on trends. It’s a shame because Auletta’s insights are quite prescient. The first half of the book is particularly cluttered, but it gets better in the second half.
Despite its lack of narrative, this was a refreshingly smart book. I’m quite glad I read it. It definitely gave me new insights and has me looking at the world of media and advertising with a new perspective.
Seismic changes are happening as consumers seek to escape the legacy practice of interruption and annoyance marketing. Subscription services such as Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Prime are booming. More people than ever are willing to pay money each month just to escape the din of advertising’s assault on the senses.
This book is packed with amazing insights. Auletta reveals the many trends that are morphing the advertising landscape and the many new players eagerly seeking to carve out a share of the profits.
I learned a lot, but this book took some real work to get through. Auletta’s other books did a great job of methodically guiding customers through a story. He masterfully made complicated topics understandable.
Unfortunately, this book was rather disjointed. It is more a random collection of thoughts and observations on trends. It’s a shame because Auletta’s insights are quite prescient. The first half of the book is particularly cluttered, but it gets better in the second half.
Despite its lack of narrative, this was a refreshingly smart book. I’m quite glad I read it. It definitely gave me new insights and has me looking at the world of media and advertising with a new perspective.
June 13, 2018
Marginally useful if you want to understand the ad marketplace (reading Digiday, Recode, the WSJ, the FT, AdAge, and Adweek on a daily basis will give you the same stories with more detail, though perhaps less access to Michael Kassan...). Otherwise, a disappointingly not insightful read into an electric moment in advertising.
June 19, 2018
I was interested in the topic and the guy is obviously an expert, but it was too "inside baseball" for it to be useful to me.
April 12, 2021
It's boring, and mixed with too much irrelevant individual stories. Nothing new if you have been following industry news closely. Just skip it.
August 13, 2018
Review title: Mostly Mad Men, not everything else
Pervasive high speed internet access and mobile phones able to deliver content to almost every pocket have disrupted the delivery of content and advertising in the last decade, a gathering storm of cultural change. The impacts of the change are still working their way though business, entertainment, news media, and regulatory organizations, as well as the advertising agencies and related companies as Auletta focuses on here. While the book jacket promises broader discussion of the impacts (I presumed the "everything else" of the subtitle) this book focuses tightly on advertising gossip and turmoil.
Admittedly, advertising is key to the delivery of content. Since the beginning of newspaper publishing, then radio and television, advertising revenue has paid most or all of the cost of providing the content to its consumers. It seemed a fair trade of value for most of us most of the time. But then digital media, whether DVR'd content from a TV network or media streamed directly to a computer, tablet and now phone screen, gave us both the opportunity and the desire to see content without interruption. Now how do advertisers get their messages to consumers, how do ad agencies make and price advertisements, and how do networks, web pages, and other ad sellers price the space or time for them? In Auletta's account its a chaotic scramble for survival among each group, and it often leads to ugly competition, which is where Auletta spends most of his time.
The flip side of the digital disruption is the presence of massive amounts of new and more detailed information about the consumer, the content and advertising they see, and the purchasing decisions they make based on it. Advertisers can know more about their customers, more about the success of their message, and better target messages to smaller groups and even individual consumers. But even these benefits come with chaos: new competitors like Facebook and Google, new players like big data companies (IBM is mentioned prominently), and new technologies like robotic ad buying and artificial intelligence. Again, Auletta focuses on how these changes impact the advertising industry.
The broader cultural impacts of this tectonic shift are fascinating and impact all of us, from the relatively trivial like how we access television (cable became satellite became streaming service became on-demand) to the personally important like how much privacy do we really have when advertisers and data aggregators know hundreds of attributes about us, to the politically important like how much news reporting can we trust when we don't know its source or who paid for its content. While Auletta does mention these briefly, he only addresses their impacts on the ad business, not on the broader culture.
This is one of those books I am rating lower not because it is badly written, but because it represents a failure in my selection process. I though Auletta would talk about the impacts that are still working their way though business, entertainment, news media, and regulatory organizations, but instead he focuses tightly on the Mad Men ad industry. If that is your interest, then you will rate this book higher.
Pervasive high speed internet access and mobile phones able to deliver content to almost every pocket have disrupted the delivery of content and advertising in the last decade, a gathering storm of cultural change. The impacts of the change are still working their way though business, entertainment, news media, and regulatory organizations, as well as the advertising agencies and related companies as Auletta focuses on here. While the book jacket promises broader discussion of the impacts (I presumed the "everything else" of the subtitle) this book focuses tightly on advertising gossip and turmoil.
Admittedly, advertising is key to the delivery of content. Since the beginning of newspaper publishing, then radio and television, advertising revenue has paid most or all of the cost of providing the content to its consumers. It seemed a fair trade of value for most of us most of the time. But then digital media, whether DVR'd content from a TV network or media streamed directly to a computer, tablet and now phone screen, gave us both the opportunity and the desire to see content without interruption. Now how do advertisers get their messages to consumers, how do ad agencies make and price advertisements, and how do networks, web pages, and other ad sellers price the space or time for them? In Auletta's account its a chaotic scramble for survival among each group, and it often leads to ugly competition, which is where Auletta spends most of his time.
The flip side of the digital disruption is the presence of massive amounts of new and more detailed information about the consumer, the content and advertising they see, and the purchasing decisions they make based on it. Advertisers can know more about their customers, more about the success of their message, and better target messages to smaller groups and even individual consumers. But even these benefits come with chaos: new competitors like Facebook and Google, new players like big data companies (IBM is mentioned prominently), and new technologies like robotic ad buying and artificial intelligence. Again, Auletta focuses on how these changes impact the advertising industry.
The broader cultural impacts of this tectonic shift are fascinating and impact all of us, from the relatively trivial like how we access television (cable became satellite became streaming service became on-demand) to the personally important like how much privacy do we really have when advertisers and data aggregators know hundreds of attributes about us, to the politically important like how much news reporting can we trust when we don't know its source or who paid for its content. While Auletta does mention these briefly, he only addresses their impacts on the ad business, not on the broader culture.
This is one of those books I am rating lower not because it is badly written, but because it represents a failure in my selection process. I though Auletta would talk about the impacts that are still working their way though business, entertainment, news media, and regulatory organizations, but instead he focuses tightly on the Mad Men ad industry. If that is your interest, then you will rate this book higher.
June 26, 2018
I don't know how many people I've recommended this book to now. Working at Google I found this book to be the closest ever to describing my daily job as the author tackles issues surrounding media agencies, creative agencies, consulting companies playing in the field of programmatic advertising, and, of course, the role Google and Facebook play in the entire media ecosystem. It's a very good read for anyone interested in what's going on in advertising and the media industries and how the usual business models are being disrupted by innovation and digital marketing. Ken Auletta brings the industry closer by profiling some of the biggest names in the industry - Sir Martin Sorrell, Michael Kassan, Irwin Goetlieb, Carolyn Everson, and many others. I was a bit disappointed not to see the Google names in there - the author explained it by saying he already wrote a full book about Google (indeed, "Googled 2.0"), however that was back in 2009 and in those nearly 10 years a lot has changed in the industry. Nonetheless - great read for anyone in the industry, highly recommended!
August 18, 2018
I liked his 'Googled' book a lot. This book was a little much for me. A mixture of soap opera and business book in the context of advertisement, commercials and promotion in general. As a non-fiction book, it does not really emphasize enough the business aspects and provides little help to the reader to decide better where to spend the advertisement dollars. Instead, the book highlights betrayal, complexity and the life stories of the dominant players in the sector.
If you are a marketing professional AND you are working for one of the Fortune 500 companies, you may get a kick out of this one.
If you are a marketing professional AND you are working for one of the Fortune 500 companies, you may get a kick out of this one.
June 26, 2018
Great overview of the ad agencies and their current challenges in today's economy where facebook and google are poised to banish them from existence.
February 3, 2019
A great intro to the ads/marketing industry specifically focused on the challenges they face around disintermediation between the traditional agencies/holding companies like WPP, and their multinational clients caused by social media firms like FB, external firms, and new technologies.
The book mostly follows Michael Kassan's rise as a player when he started MediaLink in the early 2000s. Media Link was formed as a catch-all shop that first everything from executive headhunting, consulting, as well as serving as a connector between traditional agencies and the new technology firms.
By "Frenemies", the title of the book refers to several relationships including between the agencies and the tech firms, the agencies and their customers, and the agencies or customers with the mass market consumers, mostly with respect to the laters increasing resistance to consume traditional ad-content, and their use of ad-blockers to prevent content in digital channels.
Of interests was the author's contention that consulting firms, systems integrators, and tech firms are increasingly cutting into the agencies pie by offering marketing automation in the digital space, and points out IBMs IX digital ad-shop as exemplary for this trend. This might be true for certain shops like McKinsey and BCG on the strategy side since many of their teams have strong links to executive grade clients in these multinationals, but it is not the case for a PWC or Deloitte, who's pivot away from IT/Systems integrator to digital ads shop is dubious given the lack of strong consulting relationship with high-up clients within these firms that could lead to a "sexy" engagement beyond some tooling or 2nd tier support work. This is more true for an Oracle and also true to an extent at IBM. The agencies don't have much to worry about with these companies, though their real concern should be the other type of "Frenemies", Google, FB, and the other west coast tech firms.
These firms are can get the closest to replacing traditional sample-based measurements with event-level data analysis of mobile and web data, though even they are missing final attributions data, i.e. whether a person who looked at a Honda CR-V actually bought one. That's why recent news on potential alliances between a Google and credit card companies like AMEX or Mastercard are interesting as they are potential ways for these firms to avoid the agency umbrella altogether.
Beside this contemporary analysis of the sector, there's a lot of biographical material on Kassan, Martin Sorell (former CEO of WPP), Maurice Levy (former CEO of Publicis) etc., Many of these executives come from similar family histories, Russian/Eastern European Jewish emigre communities, whose families had some connection to retailers or media entities in the US. This is also Kassan's background as well, and it becomes apparent how someone like Kassan could have insinuated themselves between these firms, the tech platforms, and the traditional customers by networking and leveraging networks. The real question I was left with was, why have similar firms not been as successful, or is there enough room for just one firm like MediaLink? Or did the book just not have enough space to mention these?
Overall an interesting book, great for someone who wants to understand this sector, and wants to go beyond the simple narrative of data=power with respect to marketing challenges faced by CPG and other retailing firms. Highly recommended
The book mostly follows Michael Kassan's rise as a player when he started MediaLink in the early 2000s. Media Link was formed as a catch-all shop that first everything from executive headhunting, consulting, as well as serving as a connector between traditional agencies and the new technology firms.
By "Frenemies", the title of the book refers to several relationships including between the agencies and the tech firms, the agencies and their customers, and the agencies or customers with the mass market consumers, mostly with respect to the laters increasing resistance to consume traditional ad-content, and their use of ad-blockers to prevent content in digital channels.
Of interests was the author's contention that consulting firms, systems integrators, and tech firms are increasingly cutting into the agencies pie by offering marketing automation in the digital space, and points out IBMs IX digital ad-shop as exemplary for this trend. This might be true for certain shops like McKinsey and BCG on the strategy side since many of their teams have strong links to executive grade clients in these multinationals, but it is not the case for a PWC or Deloitte, who's pivot away from IT/Systems integrator to digital ads shop is dubious given the lack of strong consulting relationship with high-up clients within these firms that could lead to a "sexy" engagement beyond some tooling or 2nd tier support work. This is more true for an Oracle and also true to an extent at IBM. The agencies don't have much to worry about with these companies, though their real concern should be the other type of "Frenemies", Google, FB, and the other west coast tech firms.
These firms are can get the closest to replacing traditional sample-based measurements with event-level data analysis of mobile and web data, though even they are missing final attributions data, i.e. whether a person who looked at a Honda CR-V actually bought one. That's why recent news on potential alliances between a Google and credit card companies like AMEX or Mastercard are interesting as they are potential ways for these firms to avoid the agency umbrella altogether.
Beside this contemporary analysis of the sector, there's a lot of biographical material on Kassan, Martin Sorell (former CEO of WPP), Maurice Levy (former CEO of Publicis) etc., Many of these executives come from similar family histories, Russian/Eastern European Jewish emigre communities, whose families had some connection to retailers or media entities in the US. This is also Kassan's background as well, and it becomes apparent how someone like Kassan could have insinuated themselves between these firms, the tech platforms, and the traditional customers by networking and leveraging networks. The real question I was left with was, why have similar firms not been as successful, or is there enough room for just one firm like MediaLink? Or did the book just not have enough space to mention these?
Overall an interesting book, great for someone who wants to understand this sector, and wants to go beyond the simple narrative of data=power with respect to marketing challenges faced by CPG and other retailing firms. Highly recommended
October 5, 2021
You might find the beginning of this book a little pedestrian if you are not an advertising insider. But once it picks up speed, it's a hellraiser.
In the past 10-15 years you may have asked yourself, how did advertising go from capturing consumers’ hearts and minds with big, original ideas articulated with aesthetic brilliance to shamelessly ordinary messages, indistinguishable in look, tone and language from one another?
The answer calls to mind a brief exchange between two friends in Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”:
Bill: “How did you go bankrupt?”
Mike: “Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.”
There's also a shorter answer: idiotic clients + greedy management.
Ad Men > Mad Men > Media Men > Math Men.
Ken Auletta explains the horrible way down and backs it up with names, dates and figures, plus a few drawn conclusions. Like,
- 2007 is singled out as a possible tipping point, with the “empowerment of consumers, That’s the year Apple introduced the iPhone, the first smartphone, the same year Facebook shifted its audience focus from college students to everyone, and the same year Amazon’s Kindle was introduced. In years past, advertising was based on a premise that information was scarce. (…)
In these markets, where information flows freely, advertising that attempts to influence feels awkward, forced and disingenuous. Rather than building trust, advertising erodes it. Evidence of advertising fatigue is found in ad blockers and in Nielsen data that says half of those who watch TV shows they have recorded on their DVR devices skip past the ads.
The anxiety of the advertising community is revealed in the gibberish or verbal smokescreens they now employ. Just before the millennium, advertisers began to refer to themselves as “brand stewards,” as if the brand had a soul. Nike, as an amused Naomi Klein observed, announced that its mission was to “enhance people’s lives through sports and fitness”; Polaroid said it was selling “a social lubricant,” not a camera; IBM was promoting “business solutions, not computers.”
All this begs a fundamental question that comes up often in the advertising and marketing community: Are they sufficiently alarmed about the menace they face?”
- (in the past few years) “IBM absorbed thirty-one marketing companies; Accenture bought forty; and Deloitte twenty-six. Advertising Age has reported that eight of the top ten ad agencies are not traditional ad agencies but consulting and tech companies. (…) at the end of 2015 the three largest global digital agencies by revenue, according to Advertising Age, were companies new to the marketing business: IBM, Accenture, and Deloitte. And the market cap or stock value of IBM (about $165 billion) was double the combined value of the six largest advertising and marketing holding companies—WPP, Publicis, Omnicom, IPG, Havas, and Dentsu.”
- “the most likely to be disrupted now are the traditional creative agencies, and I’ll tell you why. Every publisher from Condé Naste to Hearst to NBC to Disney now has creative agency units being built inside. So Condé Nast has 23 Stories. Hearst is making all these investments in digital content creation. NBC has a content studio. Their mission is to sit down with Procter & Gamble and say, ‘We can bring you ideas. We actually know how to create it.’ They’re not saying this, but the implication is: ‘Why do you need a traditional advertising agency?’”
Today up to three quarters of the up to $2 trillion or so that is spent worldwide on advertising and marketing is not funnelled through the creative ad agencies featured in Mad Men. The rise of below-the-line marketing expenditures, including public relations, polling, design, branding, lobbying, and in-store sales promotions, was why Martin Sorrell and rival holding companies vied to stave off disruption by acquiring marketing firms. Platoons of disrupters keep coming over the ridge. Among them, none is more surprising than publishers posing as ad agencies.
This ambition was on display on a visit to the New York Times in January 2016. The Times employed an advertising sales team of 325 people, and if you spied them at their desks you saw that nearly half were coders and designers and copywriters creating ads for clients rather than just selling ad space. Under chief revenue officer Meredith Levien, they worked for the T Brand Studio, whose purpose she described this way: “We are now in the business of making advertising. Our ad sales person goes out with a content creator to meet clients.” The ads they create are interchangeably described as native ads or branded content, and they involve crafting stories featuring a brand. ”
- “The problem agencies have,” Wenda Millard, MediaLink vice chairman says, is that cost pressures from clients “is causing agencies to pay less to their employees. Because of that, they’re not as attractive. Why would I go to an agency that looks like a dinosauric entity rather than go to Google, or Facebook, or LinkedIn? Why would I do that, and be paid what I would be paid to work in a sweatshop around lots of unhappy people?”
- “Today the definition of marketing extends from the damage control of public relations firms summoned when a company like Volkswagen is embroiled in scandal; to survey research before a new product is introduced; to the targeting that data companies like Oracle sell to agencies and brands; to designing corporate logos or rebranding companies, as was done when Time Warner Cable was renamed Spectrum; to corporate positioning advice McKinsey & Company offers CEOs; to direct mail, blogs, podcasts, coupons, sponsorships, naming rights, purchased shelf space, corporate Web sites, in-store promotions, membership rewards programs, exhibitions, and young influencers like the Betches, who are paid to extol products on sites like YouTube.”
- “Google, tracks every YouTube video you watch (Google owns YouTube), every search term you enter, every result you click on. All of that data is tracked. And they use it. . . . We just don’t know how they use it. They say they use it to improve products and services. What does that mean?” Even if marketers don’t know your name as long as they have your IP address they can in most cases locate your building.
The accumulation of data to predict future behaviour has been labelled surveillance capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. Its pioneers have been digital companies like Google and Facebook that derive their marketing power from shadowing citizens and using data to become fortune-tellers.
“The game,” Zuboff wrote, “is no longer about sending you a mail-order catalogue or even about targeting online advertising. The game is selling access to the real-time flow of your daily life —your reality— in order to directly influence and modify your behaviour for profit. This is the gateway to a new universe of monetization opportunities: Restaurants who want to be your destination. Service vendors who want to fix your brake pads. Shops who will lure you like the fabled Sirens.” Success at this “game” flows to those with the “ability to predict the future—specifically the future of behaviour.”*
- “Advertising works as a value exchange,” Andrew Robertson of BBDO, says. “In exchange for advertising, consumers get free or reduced content costs. (…) Google, with 87 percent of its $79.4 billion in 2016 revenues supported by advertising, Facebook with over 95 percent ($26.9 billion out of $27.6 billion) in 2016, and Snapchat with 96 percent from advertising, would—like the TV networks and most radio—cease to be “free (if there were no advertising).”
There’s more. Much more. Worrying if you work at an agency; sad for those of us who loved creative ads; truly inconsequential for the rest of humanity.
In the past 10-15 years you may have asked yourself, how did advertising go from capturing consumers’ hearts and minds with big, original ideas articulated with aesthetic brilliance to shamelessly ordinary messages, indistinguishable in look, tone and language from one another?
The answer calls to mind a brief exchange between two friends in Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”:
Bill: “How did you go bankrupt?”
Mike: “Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.”
There's also a shorter answer: idiotic clients + greedy management.
Ad Men > Mad Men > Media Men > Math Men.
Ken Auletta explains the horrible way down and backs it up with names, dates and figures, plus a few drawn conclusions. Like,
- 2007 is singled out as a possible tipping point, with the “empowerment of consumers, That’s the year Apple introduced the iPhone, the first smartphone, the same year Facebook shifted its audience focus from college students to everyone, and the same year Amazon’s Kindle was introduced. In years past, advertising was based on a premise that information was scarce. (…)
In these markets, where information flows freely, advertising that attempts to influence feels awkward, forced and disingenuous. Rather than building trust, advertising erodes it. Evidence of advertising fatigue is found in ad blockers and in Nielsen data that says half of those who watch TV shows they have recorded on their DVR devices skip past the ads.
The anxiety of the advertising community is revealed in the gibberish or verbal smokescreens they now employ. Just before the millennium, advertisers began to refer to themselves as “brand stewards,” as if the brand had a soul. Nike, as an amused Naomi Klein observed, announced that its mission was to “enhance people’s lives through sports and fitness”; Polaroid said it was selling “a social lubricant,” not a camera; IBM was promoting “business solutions, not computers.”
All this begs a fundamental question that comes up often in the advertising and marketing community: Are they sufficiently alarmed about the menace they face?”
- (in the past few years) “IBM absorbed thirty-one marketing companies; Accenture bought forty; and Deloitte twenty-six. Advertising Age has reported that eight of the top ten ad agencies are not traditional ad agencies but consulting and tech companies. (…) at the end of 2015 the three largest global digital agencies by revenue, according to Advertising Age, were companies new to the marketing business: IBM, Accenture, and Deloitte. And the market cap or stock value of IBM (about $165 billion) was double the combined value of the six largest advertising and marketing holding companies—WPP, Publicis, Omnicom, IPG, Havas, and Dentsu.”
- “the most likely to be disrupted now are the traditional creative agencies, and I’ll tell you why. Every publisher from Condé Naste to Hearst to NBC to Disney now has creative agency units being built inside. So Condé Nast has 23 Stories. Hearst is making all these investments in digital content creation. NBC has a content studio. Their mission is to sit down with Procter & Gamble and say, ‘We can bring you ideas. We actually know how to create it.’ They’re not saying this, but the implication is: ‘Why do you need a traditional advertising agency?’”
Today up to three quarters of the up to $2 trillion or so that is spent worldwide on advertising and marketing is not funnelled through the creative ad agencies featured in Mad Men. The rise of below-the-line marketing expenditures, including public relations, polling, design, branding, lobbying, and in-store sales promotions, was why Martin Sorrell and rival holding companies vied to stave off disruption by acquiring marketing firms. Platoons of disrupters keep coming over the ridge. Among them, none is more surprising than publishers posing as ad agencies.
This ambition was on display on a visit to the New York Times in January 2016. The Times employed an advertising sales team of 325 people, and if you spied them at their desks you saw that nearly half were coders and designers and copywriters creating ads for clients rather than just selling ad space. Under chief revenue officer Meredith Levien, they worked for the T Brand Studio, whose purpose she described this way: “We are now in the business of making advertising. Our ad sales person goes out with a content creator to meet clients.” The ads they create are interchangeably described as native ads or branded content, and they involve crafting stories featuring a brand. ”
- “The problem agencies have,” Wenda Millard, MediaLink vice chairman says, is that cost pressures from clients “is causing agencies to pay less to their employees. Because of that, they’re not as attractive. Why would I go to an agency that looks like a dinosauric entity rather than go to Google, or Facebook, or LinkedIn? Why would I do that, and be paid what I would be paid to work in a sweatshop around lots of unhappy people?”
- “Today the definition of marketing extends from the damage control of public relations firms summoned when a company like Volkswagen is embroiled in scandal; to survey research before a new product is introduced; to the targeting that data companies like Oracle sell to agencies and brands; to designing corporate logos or rebranding companies, as was done when Time Warner Cable was renamed Spectrum; to corporate positioning advice McKinsey & Company offers CEOs; to direct mail, blogs, podcasts, coupons, sponsorships, naming rights, purchased shelf space, corporate Web sites, in-store promotions, membership rewards programs, exhibitions, and young influencers like the Betches, who are paid to extol products on sites like YouTube.”
- “Google, tracks every YouTube video you watch (Google owns YouTube), every search term you enter, every result you click on. All of that data is tracked. And they use it. . . . We just don’t know how they use it. They say they use it to improve products and services. What does that mean?” Even if marketers don’t know your name as long as they have your IP address they can in most cases locate your building.
The accumulation of data to predict future behaviour has been labelled surveillance capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. Its pioneers have been digital companies like Google and Facebook that derive their marketing power from shadowing citizens and using data to become fortune-tellers.
“The game,” Zuboff wrote, “is no longer about sending you a mail-order catalogue or even about targeting online advertising. The game is selling access to the real-time flow of your daily life —your reality— in order to directly influence and modify your behaviour for profit. This is the gateway to a new universe of monetization opportunities: Restaurants who want to be your destination. Service vendors who want to fix your brake pads. Shops who will lure you like the fabled Sirens.” Success at this “game” flows to those with the “ability to predict the future—specifically the future of behaviour.”*
- “Advertising works as a value exchange,” Andrew Robertson of BBDO, says. “In exchange for advertising, consumers get free or reduced content costs. (…) Google, with 87 percent of its $79.4 billion in 2016 revenues supported by advertising, Facebook with over 95 percent ($26.9 billion out of $27.6 billion) in 2016, and Snapchat with 96 percent from advertising, would—like the TV networks and most radio—cease to be “free (if there were no advertising).”
There’s more. Much more. Worrying if you work at an agency; sad for those of us who loved creative ads; truly inconsequential for the rest of humanity.
September 17, 2018
If you follow GoodRead's average rating, check out the range on this book. One person gave one start and said it was 'too inside baseball'. 2 other's gave 1 star and said it wasn't anything new if you were in the industry.
This would be an example of how the book discusses media moving from a mass product - where one review system fits all - to a more customized 1 to 1 digital world.
I wish it was more of a structural analysis of how the content of multiple kinds are forcing changes in the advertising world. Instead, it's more like a commentary on the advertising world with a human interest point of view, as opposed to strategic issues analysis. For example, I don't even recall if he tries to say that industry revenues are trending in what direction over 5 year periods. There is a line about a 1-year change. There is a line about what categories are counted. It seems to me that the Advertising industry as it's covered is reacting, not leading the adjustments to what they do. In short, it would have been nice to have a narrative that included a bunch of graphs. That's just me though. The book is for New Yorker a
I did enjoy the book. I didn't know who ran revenue at Facebook or that the founder there was out of the office when other people decided they'd be an advertising platform. I didn't know about the Lion Awards in France. I hadn't heard of Michael Kassan. If you're like that, I'd recommend the book. There's a lot of references to the world changing from Med Men to being more data-driven. I believe him, but I wish there were graphs supporting that an enlightening me with the data. Instead, it's kind of like watching Mad Men, which I enjoyed. So there you.
This would be an example of how the book discusses media moving from a mass product - where one review system fits all - to a more customized 1 to 1 digital world.
I wish it was more of a structural analysis of how the content of multiple kinds are forcing changes in the advertising world. Instead, it's more like a commentary on the advertising world with a human interest point of view, as opposed to strategic issues analysis. For example, I don't even recall if he tries to say that industry revenues are trending in what direction over 5 year periods. There is a line about a 1-year change. There is a line about what categories are counted. It seems to me that the Advertising industry as it's covered is reacting, not leading the adjustments to what they do. In short, it would have been nice to have a narrative that included a bunch of graphs. That's just me though. The book is for New Yorker a
I did enjoy the book. I didn't know who ran revenue at Facebook or that the founder there was out of the office when other people decided they'd be an advertising platform. I didn't know about the Lion Awards in France. I hadn't heard of Michael Kassan. If you're like that, I'd recommend the book. There's a lot of references to the world changing from Med Men to being more data-driven. I believe him, but I wish there were graphs supporting that an enlightening me with the data. Instead, it's kind of like watching Mad Men, which I enjoyed. So there you.
August 1, 2018
I was quite disappointed with this book.
Advertising is one of the first industries to embrace and/or be affected by the digital revolution and it is evolving at an incredible rate. It is not being turned upside down for the second time now, despite being an early adopter of digital. As such, advertising - if analysed by a skilled writer - could be a good case study on how digital is reshaping business and how lessons from advertising might influence other industries.
While "Frenemies" highlighted some of the trends in the business - the rise of in-house agencies, publishers setting up ad agencies, digital giants providing alternative forms of advertising, consulting firms entering the "Traditional" advertising space - it was very superficial and almost gossipy, shaping its point of view from interviews done with a narrow range of players (and overly on Michael Kassan) and not delving into the "reasons why" these trends are occurring.
What I was looking for was some analysis and thoughts about the possible opportunities and outcomes of the expected changes in advertising - besides the fact that most of the heads of the large holding companies are ageing without specified successors. This type of value added thinking is sorely lacking in "Frenemies" which is more of a collection of interviews than anything else.
Give the book a pass.
Advertising is one of the first industries to embrace and/or be affected by the digital revolution and it is evolving at an incredible rate. It is not being turned upside down for the second time now, despite being an early adopter of digital. As such, advertising - if analysed by a skilled writer - could be a good case study on how digital is reshaping business and how lessons from advertising might influence other industries.
While "Frenemies" highlighted some of the trends in the business - the rise of in-house agencies, publishers setting up ad agencies, digital giants providing alternative forms of advertising, consulting firms entering the "Traditional" advertising space - it was very superficial and almost gossipy, shaping its point of view from interviews done with a narrow range of players (and overly on Michael Kassan) and not delving into the "reasons why" these trends are occurring.
What I was looking for was some analysis and thoughts about the possible opportunities and outcomes of the expected changes in advertising - besides the fact that most of the heads of the large holding companies are ageing without specified successors. This type of value added thinking is sorely lacking in "Frenemies" which is more of a collection of interviews than anything else.
Give the book a pass.
August 28, 2018
A look at how the internet age has forced the advertising industry to change and adapt, becoming more scientfic than creative. Six billion people worlwide use smartphones, outdating other media. Companies like China's Tencent have developed platforms where people can meet, buy and share, gathering their trends and preferences' data along the way. The ability to track what people do online has made it possible to measure advertising campaigns' effectiveness and also divide audiences in smaller segments that can receive an customized advertisement campaign. But this big data collection is not always easy, and it also threatens our right to privacy, making the Internet giants our "frenemies". But understanding this helped Trump win the election, when his team engaged Cambridge Analytica, a data mining firm. They compiled 4,000 data points on each individual with the potential to support Trump, and then pumped money into social-media campaigns that went to target these individuals directly, and that is how he circumvented mainstream press and took his own message to potential supporters. So now cost-effective campaigns that make use of personal data bring effective results and are today's strategy.
December 4, 2019
The author tracks the way ad agencies have moved from charging commission for jobs to flat fees. Oglivy were the first to start the concept of flat fees which made them instantly into business partners offering the best solutions rather than service providers.Then there was MediaLink- their specialty was to provide adult supervision among chaos- in other words consulting smaller companies and linking them to others. Sellers to buyers, digital companies to brands etc.
Saatchi believed in size does matter and acquisitions helped them to increase their global footprint to pitch clients any where.
And finally came the frenemies - google and facebook who have the power to rech the consumer directly- without the middlemen- talk about existential threat.
In a nutshell, the book, while steers clear of predicting what the future will be, points definitely towards a role reversal, change of control and the new internet laws that empowers the consumers even more. It is often said when something is free- it is you who is the product and not the product. But then, in the era of rampant sharing and communication- who cares whether one becomes a product of manipulation by huge companies? As long as there is perceived value?
Saatchi believed in size does matter and acquisitions helped them to increase their global footprint to pitch clients any where.
And finally came the frenemies - google and facebook who have the power to rech the consumer directly- without the middlemen- talk about existential threat.
In a nutshell, the book, while steers clear of predicting what the future will be, points definitely towards a role reversal, change of control and the new internet laws that empowers the consumers even more. It is often said when something is free- it is you who is the product and not the product. But then, in the era of rampant sharing and communication- who cares whether one becomes a product of manipulation by huge companies? As long as there is perceived value?
July 14, 2018
A good introduction as to why the marketing/advertising world is significantly different not only from the "Mad Men" days, but also from as recently as 10 years ago. The consumer has much more information from a multitude of sources (albeit some of limited credibility) - we still don't know if that state necessarily results in better decisions! I am certain that the paperback edition will have some substantial revisions - due to the rate of change in the industry, and the impact of the #MeToo movement (which claimed Martin Sorrell in early 2018 and probably hangs in the air over other players in this space, yet to be revealed.)
I am most award of changes - Advertising Age, cited as the bible of the industry, has shrunk from a wholly paid circulation weekly of over 100 pages to a controlled-circulation (read "free") of half its former size, issued biweekly.
I am most award of changes - Advertising Age, cited as the bible of the industry, has shrunk from a wholly paid circulation weekly of over 100 pages to a controlled-circulation (read "free") of half its former size, issued biweekly.
November 4, 2018
What a mess. “Frenemies” is the cute way Auletta refers to the beneficial yet often self-defeating relationship between agencies, their clients and how advertising, marketing and public relations functions are being disrupted by technology, data mining, Google, Facebook, bad keynote speaker comments, salty language and big personalities.
There’s not a lot of new information here — and, given the attention brought to key figures within like Les Moonves, a lot of it is already outdated. Most problematic, it’s not really packaged into a coherent, dot-connecting case study about the overall state of the multi-billion communications industry.
Instead, it’s a mix of essays on different topics as crystallized through the lens of whatever business person he’s focusing on for 20 pages or so. Skip it.
There’s not a lot of new information here — and, given the attention brought to key figures within like Les Moonves, a lot of it is already outdated. Most problematic, it’s not really packaged into a coherent, dot-connecting case study about the overall state of the multi-billion communications industry.
Instead, it’s a mix of essays on different topics as crystallized through the lens of whatever business person he’s focusing on for 20 pages or so. Skip it.
September 2, 2019
Too many names, positions, back stories of said ad giants who are titans of the current industry, but interestingly, he points out (or quotes someone) that there's no future pipeline for executives to follow in their footsteps. Perhaps because the industry is changing so much that it's impossible to recreate that environment? That would be something to explore, but not at book length.
I was on the fence about buying - I did...and I'm not finishing it. Too disjointed, as others have pointed out. I've gotten almost halfway through, and it feels like a slog.
What we learned? 1) Things are not as they were, 2) Procurement departments are to blame for the emphasis on cost-cutting at the expense of quality, 3) Things change, people don't like change, especially when it threatens their livelihood 4) Rinse, repeat
I was on the fence about buying - I did...and I'm not finishing it. Too disjointed, as others have pointed out. I've gotten almost halfway through, and it feels like a slog.
What we learned? 1) Things are not as they were, 2) Procurement departments are to blame for the emphasis on cost-cutting at the expense of quality, 3) Things change, people don't like change, especially when it threatens their livelihood 4) Rinse, repeat
July 26, 2018
Interesting if you follow the advertising industry or if you’ve worked in it, but not as deep a dive as I was hoping for/expecting. It’s an odd mix of gossipy tell-all (with a particular focus on what people are wearing or what they’re “sipping” — lattes, martinis, etc. — in given moments) and industry analysis that only occasionally succeeds. Later chapters that address content demands, subscription services, streaming and native ads are some of the best, but it’s mostly a light-weight look at some very powerful and wealthy individuals who speak mostly in annoying business jargon and take catty swipes at each other.
September 10, 2018
A bit of a puff piece on Michael Kassan. Skipping those paragraphs would perhaps cut the book length in half. The analysis of the advertising marketplace and all possible disruptors, which usually starts towards the end of the chapter, is quite good. The author goes into needless details, e.g. the names and positions of everyone who was at the dinner table, even though only one or two people are then needed to further the story. The editing could benefit from photos, helping to tie a face to a name, as well as graphs and charts, as industry stats and numbers are discussed in dry paragraphs spelling out each revenue figure or growth rate.
August 28, 2018
کتاب درباره تاثیر داده های عظیم بر روی تبلیغات برای جلب مشتری در فرمت های مختلفه
تعریف خیلی مقدماتی و ساده بیگ دیتا یا داده های عظیم یعنی اطلاعاتی که حجمشون از توان پردازش مغز بیشتر باشه
مثل داده های موتورهای جستجو مثل گوگل، یا داده های شبکه های اجتماعی مثل فیسبوک یا اینستاگرام و ....
شرکت های فعال در این حوزه مثل گوگل، آمازون، فیسبوک یا بقیه با جمع آوری داده های فعالیت کاربرانشون زمینه رو برای بهبود ارائه خدمات به هرکس فراهم میکنند.
نقش داده های عظیم در ساماندهی تبلیغات اینترنتی وضوع بعدیه که در کتاب بحث میشه
به طور مثال فیسبوک بر اساس علائق و رفتارهای کاربران اونها رو در 1300 دسته مختلف تقسیم بندی کرده و برای هرگروه تبلیغات بخصوصی رو نمایش میده
البته این موضوع مشکلاتی هم برای فیسبوک داره مثلا با هربار مطلب گذاشتن، عکس، فیلم یا فرند به لیست پروفایل اضافه کردن مجدد باید کاربر رو خوشه بندی بکنه
گوگل برای تقسیم بندی کاربرانش از 3.5 میلیارد جستجوی روزانه استفاده میکنه و بر اساس اون به هرکاربر تبلیغات رو نشون میده
فصل آخر هم درباره مدل رفتاری ترامپ برای پیروزی انتخاباته
تا صبح روز برگزاری انتخابات احتمالات میگفت 91% شانس پیروزه واسه هیلاری کلینتون باشه
اما وقتی ترامپ پیروز شد جهان مبهوت این اتفاق شد.
ترامپ ابتدا با همکاری یک شرکت فعال در حوزه داده کاوی 4000 نفر که بالقوه طرفداراش بودن رو انتخاب کرد و بعد با تزریق پول به کمپین های موجود در شبکه های اجتماعی تونست تبلیغات مربوط به خودش رو مستقیم به خورد مخاطب بده و از این راه قانعشون کنه که بهش رای بدن.
در اصل ترامپ با این کار بر جو سنگینی که علیه اش در شبکه های اجتماعی ساخته شده بود غالب شد.
تعریف خیلی مقدماتی و ساده بیگ دیتا یا داده های عظیم یعنی اطلاعاتی که حجمشون از توان پردازش مغز بیشتر باشه
مثل داده های موتورهای جستجو مثل گوگل، یا داده های شبکه های اجتماعی مثل فیسبوک یا اینستاگرام و ....
شرکت های فعال در این حوزه مثل گوگل، آمازون، فیسبوک یا بقیه با جمع آوری داده های فعالیت کاربرانشون زمینه رو برای بهبود ارائه خدمات به هرکس فراهم میکنند.
نقش داده های عظیم در ساماندهی تبلیغات اینترنتی وضوع بعدیه که در کتاب بحث میشه
به طور مثال فیسبوک بر اساس علائق و رفتارهای کاربران اونها رو در 1300 دسته مختلف تقسیم بندی کرده و برای هرگروه تبلیغات بخصوصی رو نمایش میده
البته این موضوع مشکلاتی هم برای فیسبوک داره مثلا با هربار مطلب گذاشتن، عکس، فیلم یا فرند به لیست پروفایل اضافه کردن مجدد باید کاربر رو خوشه بندی بکنه
گوگل برای تقسیم بندی کاربرانش از 3.5 میلیارد جستجوی روزانه استفاده میکنه و بر اساس اون به هرکاربر تبلیغات رو نشون میده
فصل آخر هم درباره مدل رفتاری ترامپ برای پیروزی انتخاباته
تا صبح روز برگزاری انتخابات احتمالات میگفت 91% شانس پیروزه واسه هیلاری کلینتون باشه
اما وقتی ترامپ پیروز شد جهان مبهوت این اتفاق شد.
ترامپ ابتدا با همکاری یک شرکت فعال در حوزه داده کاوی 4000 نفر که بالقوه طرفداراش بودن رو انتخاب کرد و بعد با تزریق پول به کمپین های موجود در شبکه های اجتماعی تونست تبلیغات مربوط به خودش رو مستقیم به خورد مخاطب بده و از این راه قانعشون کنه که بهش رای بدن.
در اصل ترامپ با این کار بر جو سنگینی که علیه اش در شبکه های اجتماعی ساخته شده بود غالب شد.
September 5, 2023
The advertising and marketing business has always seemed vacuous and parasitic to me. Of course the same is often said with some justification of my profession of the law, but I think that there is even less there there in adverstising than in law. I have never had a good intuitive sense for what does and doesn't work in advertising. Why did this campaign work and that one fail? And, at least in the old days, how did they even know that there was a causal link between the quality of a campaign and a surge or stagnation in sales? Now, with big data, analytics and targeted advertising, it's at least possible to determine whether an ad campaign really works, but we are still stuck with the troublesome ethical questions around selling products that are bad for you, or poorly made or faddishly fashionable for no reason. An economy built on manufactured demand and materialistic dreams is surely not something to be proud of.
So I came to this book with a lot of baggage, and the book did little to change my perspective or to convince me that advertising is a noble profession. Sadly the future looks no better than the past. The big players change a bit, but in the end it will be more of the same. You'd think that there would be a better way for us to be kept informed about products and services than a relentless barrage of flim flammy ads. But as long as we allow ourselves to be herded like sheep, it will be more likely to be worse than better.
So I came to this book with a lot of baggage, and the book did little to change my perspective or to convince me that advertising is a noble profession. Sadly the future looks no better than the past. The big players change a bit, but in the end it will be more of the same. You'd think that there would be a better way for us to be kept informed about products and services than a relentless barrage of flim flammy ads. But as long as we allow ourselves to be herded like sheep, it will be more likely to be worse than better.
July 26, 2018
I started this book with some excitement, after hearing the author in a long interview on the radio. He vividly described the damage that's been done to news media by changes in the advertising landscape -- a subject that greatly interests me. But the book is filled with inside baseball about bigshots and disrupters in the advertising industry. The industry's changes and recent impact on media really were not explored here. Perhaps that will be Auletta's next book. Meanwhile, if you want to know what became of the "Mad Men" world, this one might be the one for you.
July 31, 2018
A very timely analysis of how advertising has changed over the past decades, and the way that agencies are trying to adjust to it. Ken Auletta looks at the 'Frenemies' (Google, Facebook), consultancies like Accenture, software companies like Salesforce, and the new breed of agencies that are all trying to disrupt marketing and take revenue from the traditional players. I'd particularly recommend chapters 8 (about media agencies), 9 & 16 (about data and targeting), and 18 (a look into the future).
August 11, 2018
Was excited to read this but it's a little too "inside baseball" for me -- and I'm inside! I'm a marketing person and I found the first couple of chapters (that's as far as I got so please know that when deciding the value of this review) very slow going. On the one hand, the author sought to animate the boring stuff with detailed descriptions of the person who called out ad agencies for taking kickbacks, and on the other, he explained almost nothing about how things do or should work. I gave up.
July 21, 2018
While there were some interesting moments, the storytelling seemed far too insular. Instead of truly introducing us to the key players, the story felt more like someone trying to impress via constant “name dropping” of ad world execs. There are certainly lessons to be learned if you are in the ad or ad-adjacent world (which, full disclosure, I was), but for others, I’d imagine it to be a slog, with no transferable insights.
November 15, 2018
My ratings of books on Goodreads are solely a crude ranking of their utility to me, and not an evaluation of literary merit, entertainment value, social importance, humor, insightfulness, scientific accuracy, creative vigor, suspensefulness of plot, depth of characters, vitality of theme, excitement of climax, satisfaction of ending, or any other combination of dimensions of value which we are expected to boil down through some fabulous alchemy into a single digit.
February 21, 2019
This is a really engaging look at the turmoil the advertising industry is going through at present. It follows many of the major players in the game. As is alluded to often, this is no longer the creative-driven world of Don Draper; it is a much murkier mashup of data and integration and targeting and AI and hunches (but no one knows for sure). Certainly a valuable read for anyone whose work relates to advertising.
December 23, 2019
This book is an interesting assessment of the challenges faced by all aspects of modern advertising. It also presents historical accounts of the rise of several moguls of holding companies and other contenders of the business world. My only criticism is the underlying bias towards President Trump that is implied.
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