Black Ops Advertising

Native Ads, Content Marketing, and the Covert World of the Digital Sell

By: Mara Einstein

Narrated by: Tamara Marston

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. Listener 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.

©2016 Mara Einstein (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

It's too late if you ask me....

📚 📚 📚
·Currents of Death: Power Lines, Computer Terminals, and the Attempt to Cover Up Their Threat to Your Health - Paul Brodeur

·Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids - and How to Break the Trance - Nicholas Kardaras

·The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life - Arthur Firstenberg

·Faucian Bargain: The Most Powerful and Dangerous Bureaucrat in American History - Steve Deace & Todd Erzen

·Dirty Electricity: Electrification and the Diseases of Civilization - Samuel Milham, MD, MPH

·Zapped: Why Your Cell Phone Shouldn't Be Your Alarm Clock & 1,268 Ways to Outsmart the Hazards of Electronic Pollution - Anne Louise Gittleman

·Are Wireless Devices Safe? - Jeanice Barcelo

·The Spinning Magnet: The Force That Created the Modern World – and Could Destroy It by Alanna Mitchell

·Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier

·Crystallizing Public Opinion by Edward Bernays

·The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind by Gustave Le Bon

·About behaviorism by B. F. Skinner

·The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

·The Dangers of 5G by Claudia Drake

·Radiation Nation: The Fallout of Modern Technology by Daniel T. DeBaun and Ryan P. DeBaun

·Cancer and EMF Radiation: How to Protect Yourself from the Silent Carcinogen of Electropollution by Brandon LaGreca

·Disconnect: The Truth about Mobile-phone Radiation, what the Industry Has Done to Hide It, and how to Protect Your Family by Devra Davis

·Hidden Dangers 5G: How Governments, Telecom and Electric Power Utilities Suppress the Truth about the Known Hazards of Electro-magnetic Field Radiation by Jerry G. Flynn

·EMF*D: 5G, Wi-Fi & Cell Phones: Hidden Harms and How to Protect Yourself by Joseph Mercola

·Death by 5G: An Advanced Guide to Population Reduction Techniques by Louise Steele

·Earthing: The Most Important Health Discovery Ever? By Clinton Ober, Martin Zucker, and Stephen Sinatra

Disturbing

This was a very disturbing book to listen to, but everyone should.
The author breaks down and shows what's going on: how we are being manipulated at every turn.

If you liked the documentaries "The Merchants of Cool" and "The Century of the Self" this is the book for you.
Highly recommended.

Stealthy Title Is as Tricky as the Tactics it Attacks

Started off with excellent information about how digital ads workin a number of different contexts.

Then it morphed into a strong editorial opinion, poorly documented, generalizing unethical practices as something every publisher does with joy.

It finishes with one of the most self complementary autobiographical diatribes, proclaiming everyone should be stuck in the past like the author, and suggesting all of the public is too dumb to know the difference between an ad and a story.

Simply not worth reading another word after the halfway point.