• by Jack Feuer , July 28, 2009

So much ignorance, so little time. We come again to our annual Midsummer Night's Media Dream, a.k.a. a tale told by an idiot. So let's take a quick trip around current industry news and make this year's version brutish and short, shall we?

A Walt Disney unit is studying where your eyes go online, in order to make banner ads more efficient.

I don't know about wandering eyeballs, but I know where all banner ads should go and it isn't Disneyland. By the way, for those of you who create online ads that leap across my screen like a crazy animal, or are impossible to close, or make screeching noises, or star ugly women dancing: I'd rather read a banner ad. Over your rotting corpse.

The upfront is finally moving.

My bowels and the upfront always move eventually. And the end product is the same in both cases. Isn't it time buyers admitted that the networks are to advertising what banks are to the economy -- too big to fail? And no matter the market condition, the question every year is not whether you're going to get screwed, but how badly? If every buyer privately counseled their clients this way, the whole circus would get done in a weekend.

Ben Silverman leaves NBC.

Television's version of Arkham Asylum ought to stick with Marc Graboff as sole program kingpin. But I bet Jeff Zucker is already plotting to replace him with Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.

Ben Silverman joins Barry Diller.

What could those two possibly have in common?

Interpublic profit plummets.

Interpublic makes a profit?

Bob Lutz thinks General Motors ads should show more iron.

GM's problem is not whether its advertisements show product. GM's problem is that it doesn't make product worth showing.

Nobody makes money on social networks.

Because everybody is too focused on the present to think about the future. Before the economy collapsed, there were many start-ups looking like a breed of social networks with virtual worlds. There's your monetized 3.0, folks. It won't be another Twitter that out-hips Twitter. It will be one of these hybrids. Eventually, some shop will figure this out and hitch a ride on the next online comet. The rest of you will be looking up and swearing.

Nobody does real marketing on social networks.

Because agencies are obsessed with creating bleeding-edge brilliance on what the 4As, with typical imagination, calls "The Social Thing," and clients are consumed with figuring out how to make their social network campaigns accountable. But these, um, things are conversations, not commercials. And they aren't linear, so they're impossible to measure. Stop trying to game the system and sneakily sell shit. Just be a good cyber-citizen. Eventually, the marketers that do this will be rewarded. The rest of you will be logging on and swearing.

So much sizzle, so little steak. In any case, this weak and idle theme is no more yielding than a dream. So good night unto you all. This idiot is taking a midsummer vacation from the media business and going surfing for updates on evil New Jersey rabbis.