NewsTrust - Advertising - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Attack of the Attack Ads: Citizens United and the 2012 Elections

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

PBS - By Evelyn Messinger - Oct. 16 (Opinion) - In 2012, two tidal waves will reconfigure the American electoral system and the news media that cover it. A tsunami made of money will buoy up the structure of entrenched political power, while a huge wave of personal technology will disrupt it. I can predict both of these events with certainty because they've happened every election year over the last couple of decades. Still, the changes in 2012 may be dramatic. Angry citizens around the world have been using a potent combination of mobile phones, social networking and broadcast television to upend established political orders. Now it's Americans who are angry, and this election could spark a new level of activism leveraged by these same tools. At the same time, this will be the first general election since the so-called "Citizens United" Supreme Court decision, which tossed out the last vestiges of regulations limiting campaign financing. Among other effects, this will translate into a record numbers of attack ads next fall. Taken together, these two changes may profoundly affect our democracy, and they deserve a closer look.

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Five myths about the future of journalism

Sat, 09 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Tom Rosenstiel - Apr. 09 (Opinion) - There are few things journalists like to discuss more than, well, themselves and the long-term prospects for their industry. How long will print newspapers survive? Are news aggregation sites the future? Or are online paywalls — such as the one the New York Times just launched — the way to go? As media organizations plot their future, it’s worth discarding some misconceptions about what it will take to keep the press from becoming yesterday’s news.

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The Most Sexist Ad, Well, Ever

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Nicole Allan - Aug. 20 (Comment) - In an act of shockingly retro, sexist stupidity, a local unit of the Republican Party of Minnesota has broadcast a new reason you should vote Republican: GOP women are hot, and Democratic women are not.

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The double standard at CBS

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Boston Globe - By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist - Feb. 06 (Opinion) - ...CBS’s decision to air an ad featuring Florida football star Tim Tebow. The ad, funded by the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, features the decision by Tebow’s mother to reject the advice of doctors to have an abortion when she was very sick while the future Heisman Trophy winner was in her womb. That story is an unqualified, beautiful individual testament to faith and love. But Focus on the Family wants to twist the free choice of this mother into a political vehicle to eliminate choice for all other women... ...they accepted that ad while rejecting a Super Bowl ad for a gay dating service. The ad starts with one man in a Green Bay Packers jersey and the other in a Minnesota Vikings shirt cheering against each other. It ends with them making out on the couch. By accepting the Focus on the Family ad in this context, CBS gives its political blessing to an organization that spends tremendous energy specifically excluding gay couples from full citizenship, and, with its support of conservative Supreme Court nominees, opposes full equality for people of color and women. It is a window to the future under the court’s bitterly divided 5-4 ruling that frees corporations to spend unlimited money on political campaigns.

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A Super Bowl ad we can do without

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Tim Rutten - Jan. 30 (Opinion) - Today, there are few corners of our communal life untouched by rancorous political division. CBS guaranteed that there will be one less when it broke with long-standing tradition and sold an evangelical Christian group time in which to air an antiabortion ad during this year's Super Bowl. If this were a football game rather than life -- or, at least, commerce -- it's the kind of ruling you'd want to send up to the box for a review of the call on the field.

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Apple Wouldn’t Risk Its Cool Over a Gimmick, Would It?

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Randall Stross - Nov. 15 (Opinion) - In a patent application, a new way to make consumers acknowledge a pop-up ad. “Some of the best-loved technology on the planet” is how Apple describes its products when recruiting new employees. It’s a fair description. But the love that consumers send Apple’s way could flag if the company puts into place new advertising technology it has developed. In an application filed last year and made public last month by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Apple is seeking a patent for technology that displays advertising on almost anything that has a screen of some kind: computers, phones, televisions, media players, game devices and other consumer electronics. Filing a patent application, of course, doesn’t necessarily mean that the company plans to use the technology. But the application shows, at the least, that Apple has invested in research to develop what it calls an “enforcement routine” that makes people watch ads they may not want to watch.

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Mistakes in Typography Grate the Purists

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Alice Rawsthorn - Nov. 15 (Opinion) - That’s the problem with loving typography. It’s like having a heightened sense of smell. You spend much more of your time wincing at noxious stinks, than reveling in delightful aromas.

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Why Google Faces Antitrust Scrutiny

Wed, 27 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Daniel Lyons - May. 27 (Opinion) - Most people think of Google as a free search engine—and it is that. But the real genius of Google was that it figured out that advertisers would pay to have their messages pop up when someone types in a keyword. For instance, a hotel chain might pay to show ads to anyone who types in "hotel in Phoenix." Those search ads now represent the biggest chunk of all Internet advertising. Google gets the lion's share, which has allowed it to amass such power that it may end up the target of a federal antitrust investigation.

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High Time We Set the Record Straight on Newspaper 'Myths'

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Editor & Publisher - By Donna Barrett - Apr. 23 (Opinion) - Let's set the record straight: Newspapers still enjoy considerable readership and deliver strong results for advertisers. More Americans read printed newspapers than watch the Super Bowl. More Americans read printed newspapers than own dogs. Newspapers and their Web sites reach a larger audience than ever before.

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Hanging Tough

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New Yorker - By James Surowiecki - Apr. 18 (Opinion) - although deep pockets help in a downturn, recessions nonetheless create more opportunity for challengers, not less. When everyone is advertising, for instance, it’s hard to separate yourself from the pack; when ads are scarcer, the returns on investment seem to rise.

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The Orwellian language of Wall Street finds its way to the Treasury Department

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Daniel Gross - Mar. 29 (Opinion) - In trying to rebrand dodgy financial instruments, treasury secretaries like Paulson and Timothy Geithner are continuing a recent tradition. So much of the finance sector's innovation in the past 30 years, it turns out, wasn't developing new stuff, but rather developing new ways of talking about pre-existing stuff. In the 1980s, labeling risky debt offerings as junk bonds was an intentionally ironic feint (pros knew that the instruments possessed real value). But as junk bonds went mainstream in the 1990s, they evolved into "high-yield debt"—their liability became an asset. Frank Partnoy, a reformed derivatives trader who teaches law at the University of San Diego, recalls that at Morgan Stanley in the 1990s, "we were constantly coming up with new acronyms" to describe similar financial instruments. The goal: to present products, some of which had been discredited, in a more favorable light.

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Financial collapse threatens real journalism

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By David Horsey - Feb. 15 (Opinion) - Arguably, newspapers are as vital to American democracy as banks are to the American financial system. Yet the implosion of the news business is the most underreported story amid the great flood of bad economic news.

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Social Media Gallery

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

PBS - Dec. 08 (Advertisement) - Not sure

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Ad spending moving from portals to search, entertainment sites

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

CNET News - By Elinor Mills - Feb. 25 (Opinion) - The share spent on portals dropped from 24 percent in 2006 to 19 percent, while search share rose to 31 percent from 28 percent, vertical sites rose to 39 percent from 37 percent, and spending on ad networks was flat at 11 percent. More dollars went to the top 5 ad networks.

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The webification of advertising

Fri, 18 May 2007 09:44:26 -0700

ZDNet - By Phil Wainewright - May. 18 (Opinion) - Yes it's a bubble. If, like me, you thought Google's $3.1 billion acquisition of Doubleclick was over-the-top, then what else can we make of Microsoft splurging $6 billion on aQuantive? (Techmeme discussion here). Sometimes being smart is a handicap, because it means you can always figure out some kind of justification to rationalize irrational behavior. That's what sustains bubbles into the stratosphere, and Google and Microsoft each employ some of the smartest people on the planet, so there's no shortage of brainpower available to post-justify these crazy deals.

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