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This Is Federated Media

Please see this comment that I didn’t recently decided to approve from IP address 38.99.18.254 (click the picture to enlarge)

If you cannot read the words, it says, “Jessica, Your post shows that you have very little understanding of the advertising business. And yes, you have very little traffic to be attractive to an advertiser on your own. why are you so angry anyway?”

Now take a look at who owns that IP address

Thanks Federated Media for your awesomeness. Usually I have to work really hard to prove that people are inept.

UPDATE: This is not a new event, see my next post and follow The Federated Media Troll for the past three years.

51 thoughts on “This Is Federated Media”

  1. Okay, seriously? They’re professionals?

    Perhaps they missed the day about covering their tracks and/or not using computers in their offices/on their server to make posts. Sigh.

  2. So this Jack Mayhoffer is probably just a typical corporate stooge, probably still living in 20th century media arrogance. You know – the ones who have been responsible for big media slowly and inexorably marching into irrelevance-land…

  3. i’m liking my sheltered little corner more and more. there are a lot less morons. and the ones that come to me are from the ukraine, write in a language i can’t understand about mail order brides and go directly to my spam.

  4. Whilst not a Analytics package that the SEO in me would use for business purposes, I absolutely love using Statcounter for IP sniffing. I’ve had some fun with a) figuring out who’s visiting my blog, b) where they’re coming from, and c) redirecting spammers elsewhere.

  5. Jessica:

    I’m a Senior Vice President at Federated Media and I agree with you, this isn’t the way FM should behave. We work with 100s of bloggers and are dedicated to supporting their businesses and their blogging.

    Let me assure you, this isn’t the way should, or usually do, operate. My apologies to you. I’m not proud of this and take it very seriously.

    My apologies again.

    Pete Spande
    SVP Sales

  6. Agreed that its totally uncalled for but… attacking the company and calling an entire company inept for a single persons actions seems childish IMO. Even the greatest organizations have bad eggs…

  7. I had someone from Campbell’s Soup on my site a few months back, leaving a fake comment after I posted a bunch of pictures of mold found inside a sealed container of broth. I seriously can’t believe people are so STUPID to believe they aren’t leaving a trail behind wherever they go.

    I’m pleased to see that someone from FM addressed it right here in your comments, though.

  8. Managing several hundred web sites, some that do, in fact, get millions of unique visitors a month, I’ve had to do battle on behalf of clients with their prospective investors and or companies they pitch for direct advertising.

    Here’s the reality- when it comes to stats on blogs, and web sites. There is no such thing as a truly accurate stats package. Numbers that come from Compete, Alexa, CoreMetrics, Google Analytics, Neilsen – are all inaccurate to varying degrees. Every one of them has flaws that affect visitor counts negatively. And every one of them will do so in a different way across most sites for a plethora of reasons and quite often, there is such a massive difference from one analytics program to another on the very same site. Orders of magnitude of difference.

    So the reality is that businesses like Federated Media aren’t even capable of making truly intelligent decisions about ad buying, because they rely on those completely inaccurate statistics models. Heck – just this past week an article in B to B Magazine discussed that very problem – not mentioning Federated specifically, but discussing how it’s a problem for all ad space buyers.

    So pe0ple like Jack Mayhoffer, or whatever his/her real name is, are really sheep to slaughter in their own business. At least Pete Spande had the decency to come here and apologize, though he fell short of saying he’d look into whoever the perpetrator was and take appropriate disciplinary action.

    1. You are so very right. I have been involved in the stats battles many different times. The advent of “third party ad servers” was supposed to eliminate a lot of that. It worked to a certain extent, but you still found publishers gnashing their teeth over discrepancies between their numbers and Dart or whatever other tool they might be working with.

      1. Exactly – so the real question is – does Federated care to reach Jessica’s audience, or not? And apparently the Federated AssHat who made the initial comments has a serious problem with Jessica’s audience. But rather than admitting that, he used a lame snowjob excuse .

          1. Well if they pull their heads out from down under, and back into the sunshine, they’d recognize it would be intelligent to reach your audience in a more positive manner

        1. Alan,

          You know the thing that we haven’t mentioned is that even if we accept a set of numbers as being an accurate representation we still have limited data as to who the readers are. We can speculate about it, but without more information we really don’t know much.

          Purchasing power, education, marital status etc- the hard data generally doesn’t exist.

          And none of this takes into account the post click conversion data, but…

          Anyhoo, my namesake generated some fine blogfodder now didn’t he.

          1. This is a great sub-dialog about tracking and its flaws. I was part of a team that built a major ad server back in the 90s, and the problems that existed with counting back then are the same problems faced today.

            I think the ad world quietly acknowledges they don’t know how many people they’re talking to online (much less to whom). But they aren’t too loud about it, because they have to sell a number to clients. And that’s the crux of the problem. It’s not really the technology, it’s clients who do not build robust databases and do nothing with post-click data, therefore they demand the wrong things from their agencies and media buyers.

            Great dialog, guys. It’s nice to see these conversations happening among bloggers.

  9. I really don’t know what to say that hasn’t been said before.

    I do think it is noteworthy that SVP Pete Spande jumped on it relatively quick, but I am with you… should I be in a position to do business with Federated, I will think remember this.

  10. 1st of all -I GOOGLED jackmayhofferr – he’s a jack ass. 2nd – I agree with Amy – love the 11 minutes on your site – apparently HE was captivated. 3rd – did I say he was a jack ass?

    Anyone saying you can’t get good numbers as the excuse for his post is ridiculous. Try ENGAGEMENT. Jessica is about engagement, she is thought provoking, she KEEPS people’s attention. Whether she gets 1 visitor a day or 10 million, there are MILLIONS of sites out there that people BOUNCE off of upon landing.

    They don’t do that when they come to this blog…. as the story goes with the screen shot.

    Brands need to get the clue that it’s about engagement not site visitors and agencies like Federated are going to miss out on great content providers because they think IMPRESSIONS (shh! don’t tell anyone this interesting but TRUE FACT: ONLY 8% of the Internet users click on 85% of the banner ads) are the only thing that matters.

  11. Seriously–none of you are laughing at that name “jackmayhoffer”? Say it slowly. And drop the “er” at the end.

    Apparently your numbers are good enough that the SVP of sales has to come apologize in your comments ; )

    1. Actually Maggie,

      It’s the very 1st thing I thought of when I saw his name. But uh, since it IS the 1st thing that came to mind, I figured I’d look like a typical guy (which apparently, I am) if I mentioned that, so I chose to be a bit more politically mature in my original post… :-)

  12. Wow. I have to say, I’ve worked with Federated Media for years and I’ve gotten to know a lot of their team. This kind of juvenile behavior isn’t in line with the experiences I’ve had or the people I know. There are a lot of professional, smart, hardworking people over there who must be mortified, and a certain “Mr. Mayhoffer” has probably soaked through a couple business shirts by now while everyone compares notes and circles in on him.

    Ugh. I’m really sorry.

  13. Good for you. Anyone stupid enough to do something like that deserves whatever they get. The Internet is not anonymous no matter what people have been led to believe.

  14. I agree with the quality (of engagement) over quantity argument, as cliche as it sounds. I don’t agree with Jessica on everything but I still read her posts whenever it lands in my inbox. She somehow has a way of presenting an argument straightforward and in a way that I simply cannot get pissed off even if I disagree with her position. I don’t know why. I do know that I trust her opinions on “things that advertisers are trying to sell”. TRUST, imo, is her brand value here. She can be a pain, let’s be honest, when she’s pissed off by something and she speaks her mind, no filter, often I cry “Ouch!” when I read her posts, but that’s where the trust comes from. If she recommends something, chances are I will take time out to look into it. And if she calls for a boycott, LOL, since one thing is probably as good as the other, I may just not pick up the item next time when I am in the store. Just sayin’.

    1. Engagement aside, I have more traffic than more than a few of their existing publishers. The traffic discussion was a red herring, the real issue is something else. I’m guessing that my tone doesn’t please folks.

      Good thing I don’t give a fuck.

      1. This right here? Makes me want to wrap you up in hugs. There are far too few people on the Internet these days who aren’t willing to play the “Duck, Duck, Kiss Ass” game.

  15. You have to wonder what they’re really up to. The ironic thing is that they need us more than we need them, and that they just don’t get the whole numbers vs. “influencer” arguments (though I’m sure your numbers are lovely!) ;)

  16. Great points Jessica. Friends of my children are forever trying to add me on Facebook and politely but firmly decline. First of all, I have no interest in being friends with an 11 year old but, more importantly, I hide my profile for a reason. I’m a single mom and I use FB to keep in touch with old friends and new ones. What I do in my time when they’re with their father is completely my business and needs to remain so. Social media is not a euphemism for no boundaries. You friend who you know and trust and leave it at that.

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