Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business and Everything Else

For more than three decades in books and in my Annals of Communications pieces and profiles for The New Yorker I have reported on the digital hurricane that has swept across the media industry amp160I have tried to amp8220follow the moneyamp8221 to understand the source of the economic harm that has struck newspapers magazines television and radio all reeling from shrinking advertising revenue revenue now fueling companies like Google and Facebook amp160You can almost hear the young Barney Pressman trilling the world amp8220Youamp8217ll all need advertising and marketingamp8221Worldwide advertising and marketing is variously estimated to be a 1 trillion to 2 trillion industry amp160Yet advertising and marketing like the media industry it has long subsidized is convulsed by change struggling itself to figure out how to sell products on mobile devices without harassing consumers how to reach a younger generation accustomed to dodging ads and how to capture consumer attention in an age where choices proliferateamp160 And a mass audience is rareUnsettling change was the subject of much of my work for The New Yorker and in my books and the advertising industry was often an underexplored story amp160I gained a better appreciation of advertising while reporting my 2009 book Googled The End of The World As We Know Itamp160 The flight of advertisers from old to new media was hard to miss Less obvious was the impact on the ad industry itself in the public imagination we were still in the age of Don Draper amp160But I began to see more and more clearly how this industry that had been intrinsic to the disruption of old media was itself facing fundamental challenges to its business model amp160This mattered because in a nonstaterun economy advertising is the bridge between seller and buyer amp160And that bridge is teetering jolted by consumers annoyed by intrusive ads yet dependent on them for amp8220freeamp8221 or subsidized media amp160In this sense consumers are frenemiesTo dig deeper into this world is to realize that more is being disrupted here than the flow of marketing dollars amp160The agency edifice itself is being assaulted as new rivals surface tech and consulting and public relations and media platform companies and mistrustful advertisers many of whom have long been allied with the agencies and claim still to be amp160A once comfortable agency business is now assailed by frenemies companies that both compete and cooperate with themFor many years I examined advertising as an aspect of some other story I was tellingamp160 It crept up on me that there was much to be learned by turning that around and looking deeply into the advertising industry itself and through it out onto the wider world a world of AI and algorithms and Big Data amp160These raise fundamental issues including issues of privacy issues of whether the science of advertising can replace the art whether relationships still matterIn my new book Frenemies I attempt to step into the shoes of a range of important protagonists in the business including WPPamp8217s Martin Sorrell GroupMamp8217s Irwin Gotlieb Unileveramp8217s Keith Weed Bank of Americaamp8217s Anne Finucane RGAamp8217s Bob Greenberg Facebookamp8217s Carolyn Everson and MediaLinkamp8217s Michael Kassan amp160Ultimately I try to tell a story of a world whose fate hangs in the balance and why that fate matters to us allNote Frenemies will come out in early June amp160Ken will provide a sneak peek at the ANA Advertising Financial Management Conference via an interview with Jack Myers on May 1Click the social buttons above or below to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business and Everything Else

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Ken Auletta

"About That" with Carl Mayer: Corinne Casagrande (Episode 8: Consumer Spending) - By Carl Mayer

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Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business and Everything Else

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Ken Auletta

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