The last few weeks have seen a couple of remarkable announcements, one from the FTC about digital advertising disclaimers and one from the SEC about corporate financial disclosures, that just make digital advertising that much harder, if not totally impracticable.
It can be difficult for brick-and-mortar businesses to generate a loyal online social media following, but that is no excuse for transforming the social act of “friending” someone into a purely monetized, commercial relationship.
Wrangling over the proposed Google-Yahoo advertising deal makes one wonder whether scale, a virtue in Silicon Valley, can also be a vice. With apologies to economist E.F. Schumacher, big isn’t bad anymore, it’s good.