• by Maarten Albarda , Featured Contributor, December 28, 2015

It has been quite a year for our industry. We saw an unprecedented number of big account pitches, which turned out to be more of a rearranging of the deck chairs. Where Omnicom lost one, it won another; where WPP lost one, it won another, and so on. The only company that lost more accounts than it won was Publicis.

Reassuringly, ad fraud continued to make headlines (for all the wrong reasons), and the marketing word of the year — “ad blocking” — burst onto the scene with much fanfare, but less convincing data to prove that it is/is not a huge problem (which is not to say it will — or will not — be a huge problem in 2016 and beyond).

And so it is time to share with you how my writings resonated with you. The conclusion at the end of 2014 was that you, dear reader, are wholly unpredictable. What I thought were surefire winners got little attention, and what I thought would not resonate much sometimes did extremely well.

So let’s see how 2015 worked out. As i did last year, I have ranked my posts by the three measures provided: (1) Recommends (kind of like a Net Promoter Score); (2) Shares and (3) Comments.

The top three most-recommended articles were (in reverse order): 3. “The Break-up: Clients And Agencies Have Fallen Out Of Love”; 2. “In Honor of my Dad,” in which I shared my dying dad’s words of wisdom that he wanted me to relay to my children (I would like to thank you for all the kind words you shared in return); and 1. “Live TV Viewing Is Dying By A Thousand Paper Cuts.”

The top three most-commented-upon articles were — well, a top-two, really. The second most- commented-upon article was the one about my dad, and the number one most-commented-upon article was “Live TV Viewing Is Dying By A Thousand Paper Cuts.” All other articles received six or fewer comments. Clearly I’m not controversial enough.

So that leaves the “Most Shared” top three. A March column, “Five Things That Make Me Question The Maturity Of Digital Advertising,” came in third, showing that listicle click-bait still works. In second place came my prediction that a deluge of poor content marketing would lead to consumers looking for content-marketing blockers (“Next On Consumers' To-Block List: Content Marketing!”).

The number one most-shared article was definitely one I did not see coming. It was one I wrote in January, and it made the point that being in charge of an agency or agency holding company wasn’t much fun anymore. It was shared 247 times, meaning that either my readers are mostly heads of agencies, or people feeling really sorry for heads of agencies.

So there you have it. I wrote, you judged — leaving me just as confused as last year. I have only one remedy to address my confusion: I will just keep on writing about topics I find interesting, hoping that sometimes you will find that interesting, too.

But I won’t ever write about cable companies again. That post got the lowest score ever. I guess you hate your cable company as much as you hate having to read about them…Happy new year!