• The American News Media's Most Important Story Right Now
    There is no debate that the media is not adequately covering the story of Puerto Rick after the hurricane, where there's no power, limited food, limited clean water and limited operational infrastructure.
  • Solving Advertising's Trust Problem
    When the choices of where to advertise were few -- local radio, local newspapers, local broadcast TV, magazines and Yellow Pages -- the issue of trust in your media partners was pretty straightforward: Did my ad run as promised? Was the copy OK? Did they charge me the right amount? Flash-forward to today. By far the hottest topic among Advertising Week attendees, panelists and pundits in New York City over the past few days has been advertising's big trust problem.
  • What's Going On Out There?
    We are arguing about whether our citizens have the right to protest peacefully (they do). We are arguing about whether sports teams should be engaged in politics or not, and whether politicians should be engaged with sports teams. We are arguing about whether sports teams should visit the White House or not. We are arguing so much that we are missing out on the fact that a few million people are in very dire straits and our country doesn't appear to be doing much to help any of them.
  • Together We Lie
    Humans are social animals. We've become this way because, evolutionarily speaking, we do better as a group than individually. But there's a caveat here. If you get a group of usually honest people together, they're more likely to lie. Why is this?
  • Amazon's M&A Strategy Evolves
    2017 is on pace to be one of Amazon's most acquisitive years ever, with eight transactions completed at the close of Q2. The general assumption is that acquired companies will be brought under the corporate umbrella, and the existing brand will be replaced by Amazon's powerful consumer brand. But on a closer look at a number of Amazon's largest acquisitions, it's clear that the highest profile ones have been given remarkable freedom to build independent brands and cultures rather than be subsumed by their powerful parent brand.
  • The Disappearance Of Advertising-Supported Media
    We, consumers of media, have access to an ever growing number of platforms and providers all ready to entertain, inform and engage us. The biggest challenge seems to be not figuring out the limitations of what new technologies and creative minds can come up with, but how to make a decent living creating it all.
  • Who Will Own The 'Marketing Cloud' Of The Future?
    Who will own the future of the trillion dollars or so spent on marketing every year? Many people believe this arena will be dominated by whoever controls the most and best consumer data, combined with the most and best opportunities to connect that data with massively scaled touchpoints These companies will have lots of consumer data and lots of chances to capture value from that data in the targeting, measurement and optimization of all forms of commercial communication, from email, digital banners, digital video and TV ads to e-commerce personalization, snail mail and telemarketing.
  • Are You The Smartest Person In The Room? (Hint: No)
    Are you the smartest person in the room? I can pretty much never say yes - but more often than not, I can tell who in the room thinks they are. Inevitably, they want everyone else to think it, too. It's an unattractive quality in a co-worker and one that creates lots of unnecessary tension.
  • I, Robot....
    In the year 1942, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov introduced the Three Rules of Robotics in his collection of short stories, "I, Robot." Asimov set the rules coming from the Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D. What was once an unimaginably distant time in the future is now knocking with increasing intensity on the door of the present. And Elon Musk, for one, is worried, noting, "AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization" Musk believes, Rules of Robotics or no, we won't be able to control this genie once it gets out of its bottle.
  • Why Facebook Can't Stop Anti-Semitic Ads Without Cultural Context
    Journalist (and former 'MediaPost' columnist) Bob Garfield took to the stage in Philadelphia last week, sharing 90 remarkable minutes of his life story for his one-man show "Ruggedly Jewish." It was the abridged version -- to be sure. But along the way he covered artichokes, an armed abduction, a celery museum -- and anti-Semitism.
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