From Facebook to Talking Points Memo to the New York Times, often what looks like fact-based journalism is not. It’s advertising. Not only are ads indistinguishable from reporting, the Internet we rely on for news, opinions and even impartial sales content is now the ultimate corporate tool. Reader beware: content without a corporate sponsor lurking behind it is rare indeed. Black Ops Advertising dissects this rapid rise of “sponsored content,” a strategy whereby advertisers have become publishers and publishers create advertising—all under the guise of unbiased information. Covert selling, mostly in the form of native advertising and content marketing, has so blurred the lines between editorial content and marketing message that it is next to impossible to tell real news from paid endorsements. In the 21st century, instead of telling us to buy, buy, BUY, marketers “engage” with us so that we share, share, SHARE—the ultimate subtle sell. Why should this concern us? Because personal data, personal relationships, and our very identities are being repackaged in pursuit of corporate profits. Because tracking and manipulation of data make “likes” and tweets and followers the currency of importance, rather than scientific achievement or artistic talent or information the electorate needs to fully function in a democracy. And because we are being manipulated to spend time with technology, to interact with “friends,” to always be on, even when it is to our physical and mental detriment.

From FSGO x Logic: a revealing examination of digital advertising and the internet's precarious foundation In Subprime Attention Crisis, Tim Hwang investigates the way big tech financializes attention. In the process, he shows us how digital advertising—the beating heart of the internet—is at risk of collapsing, and that its potential demise bears an uncanny resemblance to the housing crisis of 2008. From the unreliability of advertising numbers and the unregulated automation of advertising bidding wars, to the simple fact that online ads mostly fail to work, Hwang demonstrates that while consumers’ attention has never been more prized, the true value of that attention itself—much like subprime mortgages—is wildly misrepresented. And if online advertising goes belly-up, the internet—and its free services—will suddenly be accessible only to those who can afford it. Deeply researched, convincing, and alarming, Subprime Attention Crisis will change the way you look at the internet, and its precarious future. FSG Originals × Logic dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives. The titans of Silicon Valley, for all their utopian imaginings, never really had our best interests at heart: recent threats to democracy, truth, privacy, and safety, as a result of tech’s reckless pursuit of progress, have shown as much. We present an alternate story, one that delights in capturing technology in all its contradictions and innovation, across borders and socioeconomic divisions, from history through the future, beyond platitudes and PR hype, and past doom and gloom. Our collaboration features four brief but provocative forays into the tech industry’s many worlds, and aspires to incite fresh conversations about technology focused on nuanced and accessible explorations of the emerging tools that reorganize and redefine life today.

Account planning is a discipline that combines aspects of four traditionally separate areas of advertising and marketing. This text aims to demonstrate how to use account planning to win clients and produce better, more effective advertising. It also shows the role account planning played in producing celebrated advertising campaigns.

'It's high time we expose and remedy the pseudo-feminist marketing malarkey holding women back under the guise of empowerment' Amanda Montell, author of Wordslut ________________ Brands profit by telling women who they are and how to be. Now they've discovered feminism and are hell bent on selling 'fempowerment' back to us. But behind the go-girl slogans and the viral hash-tags has anything really changed? In Brandsplaining, Jane Cunningham and Philippa Roberts expose the monumental gap that exists between the women that appear in the media around us and the women we really are. Their research reveals how our experiences, wants and needs - in all forms - are ignored and misrepresented by an industry that fails to understand us. They propose a radical solution to resolve this once and for all: an innovative framework for marketing that is fresh, exciting, and - at last - sexism-free. ________________ 'If you think we've moved on from 'Good Girl' to 'Go Girl', think again!' Professor Gina Rippon, author of The Gendered Brain 'An outrageously important book. Erudite, funny, and deeply engaging -- with no condescension or bullshit' Dr Aarathi Prasad, author of Like A Virgin 'This book has the power to change the way we see the world' Sophie Devonshire, CEO, The Marketing Society and author of Superfast

How did a bunch of unelected, unaccountable admen end up running British politics? What happened when a rag-tag band of scruffs and smart-arses invaded Westminster, sprinkling creative fairy dust over earnest politicians? How much did snappy slogans and simplistic sound bites influence election results and even government policies? Sam talks to the people at the heart of it: Alistair Campbell, Peter Mandelson, Tim Bell, Maurice Saatchi, Norman Tebbit, Neil Kinnock - and many more. Everything is here - the moment Margaret Thatcher met the Saatchi brothers, the famous 'Labour Isn't Working' poster and the infamous 'Demon Eyes' campaign. Here, too, are the stories they didn't want you to hear: the man who snorted coke in Number 10, the fist-fights in Downing Street, the all-day champagne binges in Westminster. Dark, revealing and frequently hilarious, Mad Men and Bad Men is a hugely entertaining behind-the-scenes tour of the election campaigns of the last four decades.

A Companion to Television is a magisterial collection of 31 original essays that charter the field of television studies over the past century Explores a diverse range of topics and theories that have led to television’s current incarnation, and predict its likely future Covers technology and aesthetics, television’s relationship to the state, televisual commerce; texts, representation, genre, internationalism, and audience reception and effects Essays are by an international group of first-rate scholars For information, news, and content from Blackwell's reference publishing program please visit www.blackwellpublishing.com/reference/

As more and more conventional advertising channels become blocked, brands are beginning to renounce routine practice and take alternative and more exclusive routes. This illustrated book offers an overview of these revolutionary techniques, media and ideas.

From the author of the award-winning The Master Switch, who coined the term "net neutrality”—a revelatory, ambitious and urgent account of how the capture and re-sale of human attention became the defining industry of our time. "Dazzling." —Financial Times Ours is often called an information economy, but at a moment when access to information is virtually unlimited, our attention has become the ultimate commodity. In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of efforts to harvest our attention. This condition is not simply the byproduct of recent technological innovations but the result of more than a century's growth and expansion in the industries that feed on human attention. Wu’s narrative begins in the nineteenth century, when Benjamin Day discovered he could get rich selling newspapers for a penny. Since then, every new medium—from radio to television to Internet companies such as Google and Facebook—has attained commercial viability and immense riches by turning itself into an advertising platform. Since the early days, the basic business model of “attention merchants” has never changed: free diversion in exchange for a moment of your time, sold in turn to the highest-bidding advertiser. Full of lively, unexpected storytelling and piercing insight, The Attention Merchants lays bare the true nature of a ubiquitous reality we can no longer afford to accept at face value.