FWIW, TCT hereby refers you to DbC for this year’s mutual take.

I mention this utterly turdy show because it just recently stepped to a new low in the multiply burned-over and reconstructed capitalist Potemkin Village that is American television. This week, The Middle aired an entire episode that was an undisguised, ham-fisted commercial for the Volkswagen Passat.

The set-up, shown in this clip, is as terrible and stupid as everything else about this series and this episode.  The premise is that the main characters’ neighbors are away doing something fun, but somehow forgot to park their brand new Volkswagen Passat in their garage, so call as ask the main characters to move it in for them.  This, of course, launches a series of scenes in which the main characters praise the various wonders of the Passat.

That’s the thing about commercial TV.  It always gets worse, despite (and because of) all the money.

Facebook is notorious for constantly evolving its platform, both for users and advertisers.

It is about that time of year and the signs are all around: stores are filled with festive decorations in hopes of enticing early shoppers, every commercial announces the perfect gift for him or her, and the Starbucks red cups have finally made their annual appearance. Yes, it is time to pull together our holiday wish lists. But it’s is not just you and me making lists; top brand and agency marketers are dreaming of what Facebook might give them this holiday season.

Among dear Laura’s wishes:

Third-party tracking within social ads.

Agency and brand marketers are also accustomed to including their own tracking urls within display advertising. While this is possible within certain Facebook marketplace ads, whenever a brand wants to use an ad with ‘social context’ (e.g. embedded like/share/read/listen button or sponsored story ad), they forego the ability to include third party tracking.

Obviously there are great benefits to running the ads with social context. They tend to be a highly efficient way of garnering ‘likes’ or desired actions since the user can engage directly within the ad unit. These ad units are also more relevant to users since they incorporate behaviors of users’ friends and provide a positive word of mouth experience.

On the flip side, the inability to include third party tracking makes it more difficult for brands to track downstream actions of these users. Perhaps Facebook will consider allowing a hybrid that serves the dual purpose of keeping users within the Facebook platform, but allowing brands to track their other activities on the brand page.

As heart-rending as Tiny Tim, isn’t it? Who among us hasn’t shed tears over corporate capitalists’ still-limited ability to track people’s downstream actions?

Not to worry, though, friends. Facebook, Ms. O’Shaughnessey reminds us, is certainly no Scrooge to its own true constituency:

Facebook is the world’s most pervasive social network and has a constantly improving advertising platform. Although the metrics and analytics are not totally comprehensive, and not an exact replica of display advertising, the power of social ads, the incredible targeting and the reach of the platform means that marketing on Facebook should be a crucial part of every brand manager’s marketing mix. As Facebook continues to innovate, marketers will certainly get some of the capabilities they long for and will continue to get new functionality that ties into the social graph [sic + wtf? + predictable explanation] and enables the most powerful advertising online.

We live in a kind of digital feudal economy these days. We live on land we don’t own, and we provide the masters of the realm (Facebook, Google, etc.) with unlimited free access to our data and behavior, which they monetize for billions of dollars. We get to keep our little plots of digital land for free and are otherwise pretty much at the whim of the feudal masters.

Of course, the masters are actually corporate capitalists, and the corporate capitalists at Facebook and Google are, as their founders now admit, 100 percent in the advertising business, meaning their product is both harvesting data and delivering eyeballs, eardrums, and mindshares to other corporate capitalists, who use those products to plan and execute marketing campaigns.

Nonetheless, the analogy to feudalism is apt. Surrendering corvée to exploiting overlords is the price of admission to almost all internet activities in the United States, including the basic search engine services mediated by Google.

Of course, there is no technical reason why the internet could not include first-class, not-for-profit, data-secure search engines and other services. It’s just that the overclass won’t permit such possibilities to be discussed, let alone implemented.

Here is one insider’s explanation of brand safety:

With the advent of contextual display advertising [on the internet], a host of new advertising opportunities opened up for marketers across every industry. Whether contextualization is done at the site level (i.e. ESPN.com is about sports) or at the page level (i.e. automotive content on CNN.com), the ability to target ads around content—in addition to demographic and behavioral profiles—is pretty powerful stuff. But with these big opportunities comes an equal amount of risk. Imagine an automotive ad next to a news story about a horrific car crash or an ad for a vacation package next to tsunami news coverage of the same destination. We see it in contextual search as well as display. It’s enough to make any brand marketer anxious about any sort of online advertising.

A “brand-safe” environment, of course, is one in which the placer of the advertisement doesn’t have to worry about such horrific outcomes.

Firms like LucidMedia now provide their corporate clients the following services:

RESTON, Va.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–LucidMedia, a leading online advertising demand-side platform (DSP), today announced that it has deployed the industry’s first preemptive brand safety capabilities, enabling advertisers and agencies to detect and anticipate inappropriate content on a real-time basis and in advance of purchasing media for display advertising campaigns. The preemptive brand protection capabilities have been proven throughout a decade of research and development with the company’s patented ClickSense contextual advertising technology.

“Preemptive protection for brand advertisers is hard to do, but we believe it’s absolutely critical for advertisers and agencies to have this capability, especially for traditional big brands to more fully trust and embrace online advertising while increasing efficiency.”

LucidMedia’s preemptive brand protection capabilities differ significantly from “traditional” post-campaign brand safety analysis by using the company’s patented technology to pre-screen online advertising inventory. This involves tens of thousands of designated categories for detecting impression content with potentially objectionable concepts. Each advertiser can set criteria, or sensitivity levels, around specific categories ranging from adult entertainment to alcohol, drugs, war, hate, profanity and thousands of others. LucidMedia’s technology uses proprietary content markers to detect inappropriate impressions in advance that an advertiser may want to block partially or across the board based on their sensitivity levels and specific needs. Using LucidMedia DSP, agencies and advertisers can very quickly determine if a potential page is safe based on the advertisers’ criteria and sensitivity levels.

As they work to secure ad environments, the new brand safety firms think in terms not just of preemption, but also sanitization:

Real brand safety, meaning a demonstrably safe environment for brand advertisers to promote their message online, comes from sanitizing the ad space before the ad is served. Of course pre-impression analysis for relevance, performance and safety is very difficult to do so it’s the least prevalent form out there. Evaluating billions of impressions a day for relevance takes a robust platform and deep integration with all of the real-time bid aggregation points. But it pays huge dividends in both safety and efficiency by guaranteeing quality impressions and eliminating the need for pass-backs. With truly preemptive brand safety you only buy what is safe with no waste in the equation.

All this, of course, has always been a central part of corporate media sponsorship. Yet, prior to the opening of the democratic band of the internet, its discussion was mostly confined to closed-door interpersonal interactions between sponsors and broadcasters.

Now, the heightened “risk” embodied in the existence of a realm of unrestricted, non-commercial media communication compels big business marketers to tip their hand more publicly than before about the pre-conditions for sponsorships and ad placement.

It isn’t hard to reckon the impact on the freedom and quality of information of the long and continuing history of overclass efforts at preemptive brand safety and media sanitization.

Consider then, this, the announcement that neo-fascist media star Glenn Beck will be one of the featured speakers this year at Advertising Age‘s Media Evolved Conference.  The topic of this yearly professional soiree for marketing operatives is “smarter approaches to traditional media buying, the ways social media can enhance consumer engagement with content including TV, brands’ increasing opportunities to create their own media, and how to best use the proliferating platforms, channels and outlets.”

I mention this fact because Beck’s appearance at Media Evolved is far weightier evidence of the accuracy of the propaganda model than almost anything that can be gleaned from observation of broadcasts/content.  It is one thing for Beck to be featured as a provider of media content.  It is quite another, and far deeper, thing for him to be invited into the media planning stage.

Can you imagine the overclass shitstorm that would occur if Noam Chomsky or even David Barsamian or Amy Goodman were invited to discuss how the media are planned and run, rather than just what they broadcast?  It is literally unimaginable, of course, that such would ever happen, precisely because of the certainty and intensity of the ensuing shitstorm.

In terms of evidence for judging the Herman and Chomsky model, the reality that Glenn Beck is an invitee to the most boilerplate and big-time of media planning events trumps just about anything you could think of from the media-output side of the story.  Advertising Age is a 100 percent venerable, mainstream corporate capitalist enterprise, and remains a standard tool of the Fortune 500 boardroom.  Its Media Evolved Conference co-sponsors include McCann Worldwide, the world’s largest advertising agency group, and a host of other major corporate marketing-servicers.  Beck’s Media Evolved co-speakers are field marshals and top spies from a phalanx of big business pace-setters.  Would any of these operations or personages risk their access to corporate cash by associating themselves with Chomsky, Barsamian, or Goodman?  Not a chance.  But Glenn Beck?  He causes not a ripple.  QED.

Meanwhile, for those interested in media studies, this is also more evidence of what a mistake it is to follow the convention therein of focusing first and foremost on media content and advertising, rather than media planning and corporate marketing.  Important as they are, the former are mere symptoms of the latter processes, which are themselves mere symptoms of the continuing reign of corporate capital.

Take a look at this clip of Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz:

Schultz acknowledges that capitalists are hoarding cash. Why are they doing that, according to him? “The only reason is…the anxiety and uncertainty that exists about the political system.”

One could certainly ask CBS why a billionaire who started a coffee shop and holds that highest and most relevant of intellectual credentials – a 1975 bachelor’s degree in Communications from Northern Michigan University – gets to say anything on national TV about what ails the political economy in 2011.

Anyhow, let’s instead change the characters here, shall we? Let’s imagine that foxes have been devouring hens from the henhouse on Farmer Smith’s farm.

CBS: Mr. Fox and Farmer Smith, why are there so few hens in the henhouse these days? How do we rebuild the population in there? Mr. Fox, since you invented farming, let’s start with you. What the problem out there?

Fox: Well, we all know how delicious hens are [belches and picks teeth], don’t we? The one and only reason they are dwindling has to do with how Farmer Smith is paying for the tractor. Will he use cash? His credit card? How can we foxes know what to do next, when we have such a crisis of confidence about that tractor payment?

Farmer Smith: Some might say I should put a door on the henhouse and start shooting foxes. But everybody knows foxes are the engine of any productive farm, so we must actually open the windows on the henhouse, too. Meanwhile, I’ll be meeting with my neighbor farmers to consider how we should pay off our tractors. Soon, we’ll all be up to our elbows in chickens!

Of course, as we TCTers know, marketing is a core part of the overall corporate capitalist order, and, as such, faces constant pressure to refine and extend itself.

Hence, is it any surprise that the premium on flattery is devouring more and more of the “content” (aka programming, aka “shows”) in commercial media? Content, after all, is merely secondary advertising, something that exists to attract eyeballs and eardrums to advertising/marketing (aka unintentional shopping).

Exhibit A: The new television program “Up All Night,” the plot of which is: two new, first-time parents attempt to care for their baby, with supposedly inherently hilarious results. Is it funny, or just an attempt at flattery? Judge for yourself:

Exhibit B: The new motion picture, “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” the plot of which is: a woman holds down an upper class “job,” while also trying to be a wife and mother. This one is also a load of undisguised, straight-up button-pushing. It is, in Tasha Robinson‘s apt phrase, lifestyle porn:

Such is American culture these (late) days. Hilarious, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, for those of you wondering how Hollywood movies serve as marketing vehicles, two words: product placement. “I Don’t Know How She Does It” features not one, but two Product Placement Coordinators (look under “Other Crew”). During its filming, one product placement expert described it thus:

Sarah Jessica Parker leaves her character of bad girl from New York upper class to become a London City broker. In this case she is even a mother and has to conciliate these two roles. The comedy is based on the best-seller by Allison Pearson, who will be out in February with her second novel “I think I love you”….The shootings will begin in London in January. A product placement fit for high fashion Companies, accessories, and baby products. A rare occasion for products for kids; the premises fo this movie seems to be in fact really good.

Now that it has the mutton piled high, the disguise is increasingly off.

The latest edition of Advertising Age, for example, reports:

Facebook [is] forming a 12-member client council that will give the social network input on advertising and marketing, it announced today at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

An invitation-only group, the client council will consist of agency leaders as well as Facebook’s biggest global clients, said Facebook VP-Global Ad Sales Carolyn Everson during her Cannes keynote. The members will rotate yearly in order to give different companies a chance to participate and influence Facebook’s various ad offerings, such as the latest “comments” ad unit, which was created in its first collaboration with an advertising agency.

Two of the first 12 members of the inaugural council are Nick Brien, CEO of McCann Worldgroup, and Wendy Clark, Coca-Cola’s head of integrated marketing and communications. “The invites are going to go out next week and we’ll have it locked up in the next 14 days,” Ms. Everson said. The first meeting is planned for the Association of National Advertisers’ confab in October.

“What I’m really interested in is hearing the aggregated interests of other advertisers and see how we can move social-media advertising forward,” said Ms. Clark, who joined Coca-Cola in 2008 after a stint at AT&T. She also has something very particular in mind — reviewing social-media metrics in order to reach consensus on how success is measured in that space. “Comparing myself to myself is fine, but having the context of other advertisers would be great,” Ms. Clark said. “I’d like to see Facebook come out with an accepted benchmark.”

You could say Coca-Cola has earned its place on the council — a top advertiser on Facebook, the company has more than 31 million “likes” on its page.

Facebook wants to know what it can do to improve advertising on its platform by showing major clients its ad products as they are developed. “I would expect an actual dialogue where we bring our engineering team and our marketing team in and get feedback directly,” Ms. Everson said. “It’s important to get kickback from the market. I’m interested in having us solve our clients’ problems and how to help make their business more social at the core.”

“Our clients,” of course, are corporate capitalists. Facebook users? They’re the raw material.

The good news? People might be tiring of the whole banal trick.

If ever there were a question that was easy to answer, this, despite the media reportage suggesting otherwise, is it. There are two extremely basic and overwhelming reasons why white people are over-represented in television advertisements:

1. In societies with substantial racist histories (to say nothing of those with epic, paint-peeling racist histories like the UK and USA), whites still have way more money than non-whites, so the whites simply count more (and more often) as marketing “targets.”

2. Big business marketing is inherently conservative, inherently afraid of offending the most backwards parts of its targeted audiences. Hence, on topics like race and gender, capitalist advertising is always going to be at least a step behind the overall population, to say nothing of reason, enlightenment, and truth/justice.

Recall the self-report of Ed Vorkapich, long-time Pepsi-Cola advertising director, which I cited in the TCT book:

“You’ve got to be careful that the white guys don’t relate too much to the black girl and that the black guy doesn’t relate too much to the white girls.”

Such is the behind-the-scenes stuff of our dominant institutions.