Politicians of every persuasion have been popping up all over UK screens for weeks. These appearances have highlighted one reason why they are universally unpopular: they never seem to answer the question they’ve been asked, preferring to answer the question they want to answer. Read more

It’s been about a week since the ANA’s report into transparency hit the best seller lists. Lest we forget (and judging from some of the less temperate comments flying around some seem to have forgotten) the report was titled: ‘An Independent Study of Media Transparency in the U.S. Advertising Industry’. It was not titled ‘Why Advertisers Hate the Holding Companies’, nor ‘We Name the Guilty Parties’.

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A shorter version of this post appeared on Mediatel’s Newsline on 7^th June

The first of two ANA reports has landed, containing the results of 150 interviews conducted by the investigators K2 with ‘marketers, media suppliers, ad tech vendors, current and former advertising and media agency professionals, trade association executives, industry consultants, attorneys, barter company employees, and post-production professionals’. Read more

The ad business it is generally accepted is in a hole. A large part of the industry is not trusted by those who pay for it and whose interests it exists to serve. Digital advertising is generally so poor that consumers go out of their way to avoid it. So-called precision targeting starts to get close to an invasion of privacy. Fingers are being pointed, mud is being slung. How on earth did we get into this mess? Read more