Kudos to killer blog Agency Spy who points out that ad industry trade mag AdWeek isn’t exactly the most objective of publications. In an article entitled ‘And That’s Why We Call It AdWeak‘ Agency Spy suggests that AdWeek editorial have to represent Neilson as part of their job description and comments:
Yes, of course, units support other units of the same company. Editorial autonomy should remain at the back of your mind and especially, when they write about their parent company, which they do almost every day in one way or another.
Then as we wrote this post, we thought – hang on, is PSFK is any position to out AdWeek when we do spend time talking about our reports and services. So we went back to AgencySpy and asked them what the difference was between AdWeek promoting its parent company’s services and PSFK banging on about our reports. They said:
First of all, PSFK is owned by no one. You stand alone. Offering services such as your own conferences, on your own website is no way a violation of trust.
PSFK offers services such as consulting through marked advertising placements on the side of the blog. AdWeak is no way “offering” its parent company, Nielsen’s, services through distinctive advertising placements. The “flogging” of their parent companies services is worked into editorial. Search for Nielsen in the AdWeek search engine by date. They mention the company almost every day as either an addendum to a larger topic or as in focused articles about the company’s services and dealings.
PSFK consults with many clients. I’m privy to know that one is SK Telecom. You have two mentions on the site. Not about the company’s doings, but about PSFK’s work for them with full disclosures in the postings. One reason for the low amount of mentions, other than PSFK’s editorial integrity, may be because SK Telecom has little to gain by directly pitching your audience.
Meanwhile, Nielsen’s target demo for their services is one that is distinctly aligned with AdWeak’s readership. The publication needs to be very clear with readers about their intentions. In no way does AdWeak make it obvious to its readership how they are influenced by being owned by Nielsen.
Are they using the companies stats? Are they obliged to write about Nielsen? Are they selling while they are reporting? These are simple questions that a paragraph on the site could answer and thus, increase trust in the brand as a whole. How are readers to know that this journalistic entity is objectively reporting on their parent company who has so much to gain from the readership?
The difference is the alignment of product and publication and then, transparency and behavior.
Thanks Agency Spy. If you want to see how often AdWeek mentions Neilson, click here.
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I work at Adweek, and I can say this is total garbage. Adweek, AgAge, MediaPost — all cover Nielsen. We’re not told to cover Nielsen, either favorably or unfavorably. Yes, Adweek, again like other publications, uses Nielsen data. I go through NetRatings PR to get Web stats. I use Nielsen stats for some things, ComScore, Quantcast, Compete for others.
It’s more telling how this post came into existence. Mediapost, an Adweek competitor, wrote a no-source story based on a job posting by a headhunter. From that job listing, which mentioned working with Nielsen on ‘exclusive data,’ the writer concluded that there isn’t a separation of the data and editorial arms. He did this without talking to Adweek or Nielsen. Of course, the ‘exclusive Nielsen data’ is just stuff that goes up on our Web site in the data section. It has nothing to do with day-to-day editorial. No matter that a single phone call would have cleared that up. Then, an anonymous gossip blog picks up on the story and adds more insinuations, to the point that the author is here claiming Adweek isn’t objective and its writers are ’shilling.’ If this blog is about trends, I’d say a distressing one is how unfounded insinuations bounce around the Web without anyone doing simple factchecking.
March 17th, 2008 at 12:44 pm