Ad Age and The Wall Street Journal are both running stories about media companies getting in bed with advertisers.
From Ad Age:
To help sell Toshiba TV sets and laptops, ESPN worked with the Japanese company to create advertising that illustrates specifically how ESPN fans could use those products. The ESPN-centric campaign represents “one of our efforts to reach sports fans while they are watching their favorite team in the living room or if they are on a laptop trying to check fantasy scores,” said Eddie Temistokle, manager-corporate communications, Toshiba America.
From The Wall Street Journal:
A series of articles that appeared in Sunday’s Detroit Free Press about Medicare open enrollment probably didn’t seem unusual to readers amid the national health-care debate.
But the idea for the articles didn’t come from an editor or reporter at the newspaper. It came from health insurer Humana Inc., which bought an ad next to one of the articles, according to executives at the newspaper and its publisher. The origin of the series shows how financial pressures are challenging some of the firmest tenets of newspapering.
My guess is this violation of editorial standards will cause rioting in the streets at any moment.
