ColemanMedia Report

A study released by the Foundation For Needlessly Speculative Journalism last week revealed that over 6 million man hours of work in the advertising industry alone have been wasted in October by reading Mediapost and Ad Age articles about imaginary mergers and acquisitions within the media space. The articles, which focus largely on speculative mergers like those between faltering portals AOL and Yahoo!, and potential acquisitions by media giant Google, have tripled in recent weeks, according to the report. “Speculative journalism is nothing new to the ad industry,” said media watchdog Clive Biegelstein. “But this is getting ridiculous. Over 60,000 words were published yesterday about news that hasn’t even happened yet, and probably never will. It’s like professional trade media has nothing real to report on, so they just make up the news. I mean, really, people, this isn’t CNN or FOX.”

Just hours after announcing their $850 million dollar acquisition of beloved online shoe retailer Zappos, Seattle-based Amazon.com confirmed that they will change Zappos’ business model from selling shoes to participating exclusively in social media marketing.  According to Amazon officials, the flood of media analysis from the blogosphere calling the purchase the “biggest social media deal of the decade” helped cement their decision.  ”We initially bought Zappos because they had one of the best customer service models we’ve ever seen,” said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.  ”They built their entire business on it.  But because everyone at Mediapost, Advertising Age and Brandweek kept pushing the social media angle, we have decided to prove them right, and turn one of the most successful online retailers into a misguided advertising case study.”