Frenemies
The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (And Everything Else)
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Todd Ross
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By:
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Ken Auletta
About this listen
An intimate and profound reckoning with the changes buffeting the $2 trillion global advertising and marketing business from the perspective of its most powerful players, by the best-selling author of Googled.
Advertising and marketing touches on every corner of our lives, and is the invisible fuel powering almost all media. Complain about it though we might, without it the world would be a darker place. And of all the industries wracked by change in the digital age, few have been turned on its head as dramatically as this one has. We are a long way from the days of Don Draper; as Mad Men is turned into Math Men (and women - though too few), as an instinctual art is transformed into a science, the old lions and their kingdoms are feeling real fear, however bravely they might roar.
Frenemies is Ken Auletta's reckoning with an industry under existential assault. He enters the rooms of the ad world's most important players, some of them business partners, some adversaries, many "frenemies," a term whose ubiquitous use in this industry reveals the level of anxiety, as former allies become competitors, and accusations of kickbacks and corruption swirl. We meet the old guard, including Sir Martin Sorrell, the legendary head of WPP, the world's largest ad agency holding company; while others play nice with Facebook and Google, he rants, some say Lear-like, out on the heath. There is Irwin Gotlieb, maestro of the media agency GroupM, the most powerful media agency, but like all media agencies it is staring into the headlights as ad buying is more and more done by machine in the age of Oracle and IBM. We see the world from the vantage of its new powers, like Carolyn Everson, Facebook's head of Sales, and other brash and scrappy creatives who are driving change, as millennials and others who disdain ads as an interruption employ technology to zap them. We also peer into the future, looking at what is replacing traditional advertising. And throughout we follow the industry's peerless matchmaker, Michael Kassan, whose company, MediaLink, connects all these players together, serving as the industry's foremost power broker, a position which feasts on times of fear and change.
Frenemies is an essential audiobook, not simply because of what it says about this world, but because of the potential consequences: the survival of media as we know it depends on the money generated by advertising and marketing - revenue that is in peril in the face of technological changes and the fraying trust between the industry's key players.
©2018 Ken Auletta (P)2018 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“A brightly readable, cinematic tour through the seismic changes currently altering the face and the very nature of the marketing and advertising professions...the most vivid account to date of what may be the most crucial moment in advertising history - the moment when data went from servant to master.” (Christian Science Monitor)
“[A] timely dive into an industry in tumult.... Auletta, a veteran New York writer who has covered both Wall Street and the media for decades, does a remarkable job of digging into the personalities and the covert deals.” (Financial Times)
“Auletta masterfully maps the rapidly evolving topography of the advertising industry.... Perhaps most prescient is Auletta’s spot-on analysis of the interplay between traditional and social media.... Other fascinating topics include how efforts such as Citibank’s Citi Bike bike-sharing program in New York City and YouTube Red represent new forms of advertising; how Facebook fell prey to Russian attempts to influence the 2016 US presidential election; and how smartphones have revolutionized advertising. Intelligent and well researched, Auletta’s lively survey serves as an excellent primer to a brave new world.” (Publishers Weekly)
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Story
Over the last three years, Forbes has published in depth profiles of this new batch of billionaires, including the founders of Spotify, Dropbox, Tumblr, and Twitter. Now, in a compilation introduced and updated by Forbes editor Randall Lane, fans and critics alike will get a comprehensive look at who these super-entrepreneurs are and what they say about their own success and their plans for the future.
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Awesome book!
- By Jamal Love on 06-17-15
By: Randall Lane
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Alibaba's World
- How a Remarkable Chinese Company Is Changing the Face of Global Business
- By: Porter Erisman
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In September 2014, a Chinese company that most Americans had never heard of held the largest IPO in history - bigger than Google, Facebook, and Twitter combined. Alibaba, now the world's largest ecommerce company, mostly escaped Western notice for over 10 years, while building a customer base larger than Amazon's and handling the bulk of ecommerce transactions in China. How did it happen? And what was it like to be along for such a revolutionary ride?
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Not bad
- By Daniel on 09-12-15
By: Porter Erisman
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All the Rave
- The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning’s Napster
- By: Joseph Menn
- Narrated by: John Rubinstein
- Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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The definitive inside account of the file-sharing revolution that overthrew the music industry, All the Rave reveals the family betrayal, greed, and mismanagement that hijacked one the most fundamental innovations of the Internet era. Named one of the three best books of 2003 by Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc., All the Rave has been out of print until now and unavailable in most formats. Author and veteran technology journalist Joseph Menn also wrote 2010's Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords who are Bringing Down the Internet.
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The Far-reaching Karma of Napster
- By Susie on 04-29-13
By: Joseph Menn
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The Automatic Customer
- Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry
- By: John Warrillow
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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The lifeblood of your business is repeat customers. But customers can be fickle, markets shift, and competitors are ruthless. So how do you ensure a steady flow of repeat business? The secret--no matter what industry you're in--is finding and keeping automatic customers. These days virtually anything you need can be purchased through a subscription, with more convenience than ever before.
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Can be applied to almost any business
- By C Mason on 02-25-15
By: John Warrillow
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Becoming Facebook
- The 10 Challenges That Defined the Company That's Disrupting the World
- By: Mike Hoefflinger
- Narrated by: Nicholas Techosky
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Facebook's founding is legend: In a Harvard dorm, wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg invented a new way to connect with friends...and the rest is history. But for the people who actually molded this great idea into a game-changing $300 billion company, the experience was far more tumultuous and uncertain than we might expect. Mike Hoefflinger was one of those Facebook insiders.
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mainly a tribute to the success of FB
- By Anonymous User on 10-07-18
By: Mike Hoefflinger
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The Art of the Start 2.0
- The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything
- By: Guy Kawasaki
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Whether you're an entrepreneur, an intrapreneur, or a not-for-profit leader, there's no shortage of advice on such topics as writing a business plan, recruiting, raising capital, and branding. In fact there are so many books, articles, and websites that many startups get bogged down to the point of paralysis, or they focus on the wrong priorities and go broke before they discover their mistakes.
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Like a collection of about.com articles
- By Lee on 06-15-15
By: Guy Kawasaki
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No Better Time
- The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet
- By: Molly Knight Raskin
- Narrated by: Christine Marshall
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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No Better Time tells of a young, driven mathematical genius who wrote a set of algorithms that would create a faster, better Internet. It's the story of a beautiful friendship between a loud, irreverent student and his soft-spoken MIT professor, of a husband and father who spent years struggling to make ends meet only to become a billionaire almost overnight with the success of Akamai Technologies, the Internet content delivery network he cofounded with his mentor.
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An Overlooked Hero of 9-11
- By Jean on 05-27-16
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Youtility
- Why Smart Marketing Is About Help Not Hype
- By: Jay Baer
- Narrated by: Marcus Sheridan, Jay Baer
- Length: 4 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Jay Baer's Youtility offers a new approach that cuts through the clutter: marketing that is truly, inherently useful. If you sell something, you make a customer today, but if you genuinely help someone, you create a customer for life. Drawing from real examples of companies who are practicing Youtility as well as his experience helping more than 700 brands improve their marketing strategy, Baer provides a groundbreaking plan for using information and helpfulness to transform the relationship between companies and customers.
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Good Framing, Examples and Supporting Concepts
- By Adam Helweh on 10-13-13
By: Jay Baer
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Samsung Rising
- The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech
- By: Geoffrey Cain
- Narrated by: Michael Braun
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Based on years of reporting on Samsung for The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and Time, from his base in South Korea, and his countless sources inside and outside the company, Geoffrey Cain offers a penetrating look behind the curtains of the biggest company nobody in America knows. Seen for decades in tech circles as a fast follower rather than an innovation leader, Samsung today has grown to become a market leader in the United States and around the globe.
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Misleading title
- By Kevin on 02-25-21
By: Geoffrey Cain
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Reality Check
- Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition
- By: Guy Kawasaki
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 14 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In Silicon Valley slang, a "bozo explosion" is what causes a lean, mean, fighting machine of a company to slide into mediocrity. As Guy Kawasaki puts it, "If the two most popular words in your company are partner and strategic, and partner has become a verb, and strategic is used to describe decisions and activities that don't make sense"...then it's time for a reality check.
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The Reality of Reality Check
- By Ben on 08-18-09
By: Guy Kawasaki
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Captive Audience
- By: Susan P. Crawford
- Narrated by: Carol Hendrickson
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Ten years ago, the United States stood at the forefront of the Internet revolution. With some of the fastest speeds and lowest prices in the world for high-speed Internet access, the nation was poised to be the global leader in the new knowledge-based economy. Today that global competitive advantage has all but vanished because of a series of government decisions and resulting monopolies that have allowed dozens of countries, including Japan and South Korea, to pass us in both speed and price of broadband.
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Great info, dry delivery
- By Chase Vaughan on 02-12-16
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The King of Content
- Sumner Redstone’s Battle for Viacom, CBS, and Everlasting Control of His Media Empire
- By: Keach Hagey
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Sumner Murray Redstone, once feared as the “mad genius” of media who would dump his CEOs for mere wobbles in his companies’ stock price, had built one of the world’s greatest media empires through a series of audacious takeovers constructed to ensure that he always maintained control. Today he controls 80 percent of the voting shares of both Viacom and CBS, meaning that on a whim he could replace the entire boards of two public companies with a combined value of $40 billion.
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Feels biased. Well researched, but not engaging.
- By Anonymous User on 04-03-19
By: Keach Hagey
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Dream Year
- Make the Leap from a Job You Hate to a Life You Love
- By: Ben Arment
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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What if someone could guide you, step-by-step, as you identify, plan, and launch your dream career - in just one year. That's what Ben Arment does in his transformative coaching class, which has helped hundreds of people reinvent their lives to enjoy greater enthusiasm and fulfillment while also making a living. Now he's sharing his best insights, advice, and inspiring true stories in Dream Year. You'll find out how people just like you are discovering (or rediscovering) what they were truly born to do, then following a proven process to make it real.
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Motivational!
- By ajanicad on 03-21-15
By: Ben Arment
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Appetite for Self-Destruction
- The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age
- By: Steve Knopper
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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For the first time, Appetite for Self-Destruction recounts the story of the precipitous rise and fall of the recording industry over the past three decades, when the incredible success of the CD turned the music business into one of the most glamorous, high-profile industries in the world - and the advent of file sharing brought it to its knees.
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Awesome Book
- By Todd on 08-15-09
By: Steve Knopper
What listeners say about Frenemies
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- DV
- 10-05-18
Good; not for beginners
I wanted to learn more about the advertising business. I got some things from this book but it was very detailed with lots of name dropping and I’m not sure I could tell you the difference between an ad agency and a media agency after having read the entire thing.
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- Ben
- 12-21-18
Insightful account of still ongoing disruption
Fascinating perspective on the forces reshaping an industry once controlled by a few megaholding companies - and in turn, reshaping consumerism as we know it.
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- REVIEW JUSTICE
- 12-24-18
Informative but dry
Full of important info about the shaking up of the advertising industry, but needs to be culled to 2/3 length. Repeats itself often and dwells too long on bios of figures.
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- Graeme Newell
- 02-19-19
How the ad business is changing
I’ve always enjoyed Ken Auletta’s books. He is one smart author and always provides deep insights into complex topics. This book dives deep into the world of media, entertainment and advertising.
Seismic changes are happening as consumers seek to escape the legacy practice of interruption and annoyance marketing. Subscription services such as Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Prime are booming. More people than ever are willing to pay money each month just to escape the din of advertising’s assault on the senses.
This book is packed with amazing insights. Auletta reveals the many trends that are morphing the advertising landscape and the many new players eagerly seeking to carve out a share of the profits.
I learned a lot, but this book took some real work to get through. Auletta’s other books did a great job of methodically guiding customers through a story. He masterfully made complicated topics understandable.
Unfortunately, this book was rather disjointed. It is more a random collection of thoughts and observations on trends. It’s a shame because Auletta’s insights are quite prescient. The first half of the book is particularly cluttered, but it gets better in the second half.
Despite its lack of narrative, this was a refreshingly smart book. I’m quite glad I read it. It definitely gave me new insights and has me looking at the world of media and advertising with a new perspective.
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- Vincent Scutellaro
- 07-04-18
Are you in traditional media? Start planning your exit strategy
GreAt fantastic book for the gym. I’m in advertising director or print publication of course branching out into the world of digital knowing that in a very short time all they can go away however I’ve known her for the past 10 years and been getting ready happy exit strategy everyone.
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- MT
- 10-03-18
SOOOOOO Boring.
The most interesting part of this book is how Auletta took an interesting topic in a storied, fast-changing industry and made it painfully dull. It’s like Ross is reading the organizational chart from the appendix of a business school case study, written by a b-grade airport novelist.
UPDATE: Read several more chapters. Still terrible.
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