In this edition of The Baer Facts, I talk with Kyle Lacy of ExactTarget about Mashable’s new Brand Lift program, whereby brands can work with Mashable or its agency partners, DigitasLBI and Vaynermedia, to create content assets that will appear on Mashable directly.
Strategically, this is a very interesting move by Mashable, as it continues to position the site as a content repository – not unlike Reddit – and one where companies can publish theoretically innovative presumably meme-filled content to the digerati who lap up everything Mashable as if contained the cure to cancer.
But is this REALLY what we want? Providers of news and information seamlessly aggregating and distributing advertising as if it actually WAS news? With this new program, can you actually trust or believe a single word on Mashable as being objective and/or factual?
I get it that every company is an ersatz media company today. Hell, I just wrote a book that helps people think it through more strategically. But do we really need information providers who actually ARE media companies to totally facilitate the blending of news and promotion, just to make a buck?
As a marketer, I love this idea.
As a citizen, it scares me to death.
You?
