• Ad Age, Friday, June 16, 2006 11:32 AM

With nearly half of senior marketing executives 'fessing up to paying for editorial or broadcast brand placement, "something's rotten with the state of media," reports Ad Age. An industrywide survey by PRWeek and agency Manning Selvage & Lee uncovered that fact and more: The survey of 266 chief marketing officers, marketing vice presidents, and directors found that half of those who haven't yet paid for placement said they would if given the chance. "This type of behavior is as harmful to PR professionals as it is to consumers and the media," says Mark Hass, CEO of the MSL. And even though the publishers most likely to be mixing up editorial and advertising are consumer-product glossies, he believes their standards hurt media as a group in terms of image: "When people see the erosion of concepts like objectivity, they start to lose faith in any organization claiming to be objective."

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