A few days ago radio personality (and I use that word loosely) Don Imus was sued by an advertiser for voicing their adverts on air, but also making disparaging comments about the company too. It was widely reported in traditional media - indeed, I bumped into it on USA Today’s story - but I have seen almost no commentary about it here in the blogosphere.

The company suing Imus is Flatsigned Press Inc. and it is related to their promotion of The Warren Report on John F. Kennedy’s Assassination, written by, and signed by, former President Gerald R. Ford, who was one of the members of the original commission.

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Federal Trade Commission is conducting a Town Hall meeting to discuss several topics on Behavioral Targeting and Online Privacy. This is your chance to participate in the panel and have your voice heard.

This two-day Town Hall will bring together consumer advocates, industry representatives, technology experts, and academics to address the consumer protection issues raised by the practice of tracking consumers’ activities online to target advertising - or “behavioral advertising.” It will be held November 1-2, 2007 at the FTC Conference Center at 601 New Jersey Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC. It is free and open to the public.

The Commission invites interested parties to submit requests to be panelists and to recommend other topics for discussion. The requests should be submitted electronically to behavioraladvertising_requests@ftc.gov by September 14, 2007. The Commission will select panelists based on expertise and the need to represent a range of views about the issues. Panelists selected to participate will be notified by October 5, 2007.

Topics at the Town Hall will include:
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An experience today made it blatantly clear to me that being in the ad exchange business I take it for granted that I know what actually is an ad exchange.

I’m amazed, but it had never really occurred to me that most people think an ad exchange is more like a link exchange. Meaning that an ad exchange is a system where websites swap ads with each other. That really isn’t the case at all, but based on the words themselves and the concept of link exchanges I can see how people come up with that conclusion.
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It’s been a crazy couple of months. Not only did my employer agree to be acquired by Yahoo!, but our competitive landscape has changed dramatically with Google acquiring Doubleclick, Microsoft acquiring aQuantive, WPP acquiring 24/7 RealMedia and AOL acquiring AdTech AG to go along with what they already own in Advertising.com.

Additionally, there are still some other large players who are also in the game such as News Corp./Myspace/Strategic Data Corp, and IAC/Ask.com.
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Marketers take note. Print is dead or dying. There are too many alternatives that are cheaper, more effective and easy to track.

I receive several print trade mags. They usually go right into the recycling bin. Not only do I not have time to read them, by the time the publication gets to me, I’ve already read a blog, scanned an RSS feed, or read an online case study. That also means I ignore any and all print advertising. This includes direct mail, magazine advertisements, and newspaper ads. The phone book even goes directly into the recycling bin.
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