A list of the posts in this series on Brand Management is here.

By way of iMedia Connection is this article by Joseph Carrabis of NextStage. The piece is about ad placement on a web page – and how most of the current Display Media placement ideas are just plain terrible or wrong.

Given my recent posts on display advertising, and in particular Online, the Web Site is the Ad, I thought this article would be a great read. I met Joseph at the eMetrics Summit and attended his presentation, which was a fascinating brew of cultural anthropology, brain-works stuff, and social modeling.

As this article bounced around the Brand-ing world, the reaction was pretty much this: he’s probably right, but there’s nothing much we can do about it. If you ask me, they’re right. But the thing that shocks me is this: not only do you have these folks completely ignoring what happens after the click, but also you have them essentially saying “we know it sucks but hey, what can we do?” about the screwed up nature of the display impression itself.

I’m not sure how the Brand-ing folks can sell display as a “mass media” with a straight face. These are the fundamental reasons why Johnny Can’t Brand. No “weight”. Strapping together completely fragmented impressions does not create a mass media. They are probably going to need a Google AdSense kind of mechanism to create practical value for this display space.

By the way, kudos to iMedia for having the guts to publish an article like this.