Ben Young
Ben Young
December 1, 2016

After a break, through Thanksgiving, it’s a double whammy mega edition this week. Fake news is the big topic, with Zuckerburg unable to articulate their approach, made worse by Ev Williams’s post on Medium. A lot of informal discussion around how it impacts the companies that rely on advertising arbitrage.

Notable Stories this Week

Deals/M&A

Campaign of the Week

  • Guide to extraterrestrial life on TheOnion for the new Hulu Show People of Earth. My favorite: ‘All 21st-century innovations are in fact derived from alien technology secretly recovered from downed UFOs, except for noise-canceling headphones, which were totally us.’ And then for my favorite.
  • Curbed & Jeep inspire you to get out of the city with this design lead piece on Clearhouse, a house in Shelter Island. The ‘un-hamptons.’

Smartest Commentary 

  • “Consumers are becoming more accepting of native advertisements, especially when they are sponsored by a company with which the consumer has a strong relationship or if the advertisements provide information the consumer can use.” –University of Georgia study
  • “Viewers don’t discriminate between sponsored videos and editorial content. It’s the quality of the video that really matters and determines whether or not they watch.” –Kathy Kayse, citing a Yahoo study
  • “Shifting success metrics beyond the click to post-click engagement metrics is so important because marketers simply cannot treat native the same as banners if they want to see success.” –Lon Otremba, CEO BidTellect
  • “Sponsored content that is transparent, truthful and informative proves to be an effective way of communicating brand information. Content that is disguised is not.” –Beth Donnelly Egan

Datapoints of Note

Trends to Watch/Bleeding Edge

Events & Webinars


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