ChasNote

Battelle clears up some recent confusion about how display advertising fits into FM’s conversational approach to marketing. From FM’s blog:

“FM does in fact sell display advertising — a lot of it. But that’s not all we do. The [Conversational Marketing] business model is not simple, and it’s not always easy to explain. But the connection between display and CM is direct: we work with brands to create media executions that are truly valuable (like WePC The Last Castle buy Stuart Little video , MomSpeak, American Express Open Forum, or Toshiba’s Laptop Experts), and we then use display to distribute, amplify, and announce those executions.

“We know that display advertising works. But it’s clear that the real estate any website gives to display has to deliver value to both the audience and the advertiser. As I’ve argued before, algorithms don’t replace community. There are hundreds of companies competing to deliver that value through behavioral and contextual algorithms, and we work with those we consider to be the best. Combined with CM, display becomes more than just ads adjacent to content, it becomes an invitation to a value exchange between marketer, publisher, and audience. In the coming weeks, expect more from us on these issues. It’s an exciting time to be in the media business, to be sure. “

Related: Display advertising v graphical ads.