Another Herd-Thinning Is In Order

Lots of folks at Ad Tech were completely surprised by the exceptional turnout. But when you cruised the exhibit hall floor and looked at the attendees at the after-hours events, it became clear that the booming interactive ad industry is once again attracting the sort of folks it attracted during the dot-com bubble. Did everyone else notice the proliferation of search companies? Most attendees that I spoke to did. Many of these search companies seemed to have a great deal of difficulty explaining what they do and how they do it. And they really don't seem to want to talk to you if your company already knows what it's doing with respect to search. Tell them you use a bid management tool, that you track ROI, that you handle organic search optimization yourself and that you've got a handle on search strategy with respect to affiliate marketing and all of a sudden, they don't want to talk to you. Ask them how they do what they claim to do and you get the standard "It's proprietary" line.

A couple of us joked on the trade show floor about the notion of constructing a "Scuzzbucket Pavilion" next year. Booths at the Pavilion would be half-price, but we could put all the spammers and search optimization companies under 5 years old in the Pavilion. The real marketers could then avoid them and leave them to the task of shuttling money back and forth between one another's companies. Which is, of course, what they do best.

Steve Hall had a great observation when Jim Meskauskas, Jason Oates and I met up with him in the hotel bar. He said you could spot the bottom-feeders pretty easily because the first question out of their mouths when you approached their booths was "Got traffic?"

At the Tribal Fusion party on Monday night, I was hanging out with Joe Apprendi and Thomas Falk from Falk AdSolution, Eric Porres (from my company) Jason Baadsgaard from Claria and a bunch of other folks when a sea of people flooded into the party from the 212 event. Seems like everyone was really, really young, so I made a comment to Eric: "Since when did everyone in this industry turn, like, 24?" Of course, a young lady passing by heard me and corrected me - "22," she said.

Not that I'm biased against young people, mind you, but it seems like this huge influx of young, unexperienced companies with tons of style but little substance have shown up on the scene lately. Whereas two years ago, I was praising the notion that the interactive industry had shrugged off most of the get rich quick crowd when the market tanked, it seems those kinds of folks are now eager to get back in.

A thinning of the herd is in order.

To Those Who Would Not Think

"Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue." - Atlas Shrugged My college ethics professor once used the example of the earthworm to convey the notion of the creature incapable of moral thought. The earthworm merely acts in its own interests one hundred percent of the time without any moral reflection whatsoever. If it senses a predator, it heads underground. If it rains, it comes to the surface to avoid drowning. Whenever someone in his class answered a query without engaging in any serious moral thought, the professor referred to their response as "earthworm ethics."

As I read the commentary surrounding the summation of the results of the general election, one thing becomes abundantly clear - there are many voters out there who simply refused to think. And that is their biggest sin; the sin that delivers a slap across the face to everyone who used their ability to think rationally to arrive at decision regarding who should be our next commander in chief.

The biggest determining factor that blindsided the Democrats in this election cycle was this notion of "moral values" the news media have been talking about since the Bush victory. It blindsided the Democrats chiefly because they didn't think it was something they had to worry about. It wasn't John Kerry who ordered the first pre-emptive strike in the history of our country based on manufactured intelligence. John Kerry didn't send thousands of people to their deaths in Iraq to satisfy his personal bloodlust. Who would think that a comparison of the candidates' moral values would lead people to come to the conclusion that they prefer Bush's morals to Kerry's?

But that's exactly what happened. And ironically, many voters who chose to identify with the moral values of George Bush did so without an ounce of moral thought. What we've witnessed in the 2004 general election is the triumph of feelings over facts.

By casting a vote for George Bush's morality, a voter ignores the fact that George Bush succeeded in fingering Iraq for the September 11 terrorist attacks and that he had his mind made up to do so before he had seen any evidence. It ignores everything from the manufacturing of the intelligence through the present-day insistence that the Iraq war's ends justify its means. I was surprised to learn that three quarters of Bush supporters still believe that Iraq had something to do with the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Every major news outlet has been trumpeting the fact that the 9/11 Commission found no link between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks. There's no way to not be aware of this fact, unless you've spent the last year living in a cave. On Mars. With your fingers stuck in your ears.

It's things like this that lead me to the conclusion that we've finally witnessed the victory of feelings over facts. Feelings are what lead people to cast a vote for the morality of a president who has sent thousands of people to their deaths while lying to the country about why they've been sent to die. In effect, a decision concerning morality was made without any manner of moral thinking whatsoever. Isn't it ironic? Dontcha think?

I'm greatly insulted by this. After spending so much time following the issues, trading opinions and analyzing this choice in every way, there are those of us who would ignore all of that and vote without seriously thinking.

The election was won by George W. Bush because when the rainstorm hit, the earthworm predictably wriggled to the surface.

The GOP Thanks Osama Bin Laden

This lovely gem, quoted just about everywhere...

"We want people to think 'terrorism' for the last four days," said a Bush-Cheney campaign official. "And anything that raises the issue in people's minds is good for us."

A senior GOP strategist added, "anything that makes people nervous about their personal safety helps Bush."

He called it "a little gift," saying it helps the President but doesn't guarantee his reelection.

You have to be joking. Is the GOP so desperate to get its candidate elected that they're willing to give Bin Laden props for issuing another tape? If that's the case, any doubts you might have had about the promotion of a culture of fear by the Republicans should now be thoroughly dispelled.

Missing Explosives. - WTF?

Can somebody explain to me how W. is getting away with saying John Kerry is jumping the gun on the missing explosives in Iraq? If this story is true, then we know the explosives weren't moved by Saddam Hussein before the war started. Yet Bush continues to accuse Kerry of jumping the gun and Dick Cheney is continuing to parrot his theory that Saddam moved the explosives before we got there.

How can this not be considered a complete distortion of the facts on the part of the administration?