Stratology

Bruce Nussbaum of BusinessWeek had an interesting conversation on his trip back from the Davos World Economic Forum. An exec from an Ad Agency/PR Firm told him that polluting Google searches, sites and blogs with planted information designed to make a company or its products look good is common. But to me this whisper tip sounds like one of those “sophisticated” airplane sales pitches. And to whose benefit would this be if it were true? PR firms? Ad agencies? hmmm. And the source of this tip ? hmmm. Can these agencies or their clients measure the benefits from this strategy? I wonder how long the per click and per view metrics can go up while the revenue and perhaps the stock or IPO price go down? hmmm. (more…)