Mike Masnick at TechDirt responds to the original AdAge post with more enlightenment:

#3 Content is advertising. Might sound like a repeat of the point above, and in some way it is — but it’s highlighting the flip side. Any content is advertising. It’s advertising something. Techdirt content “advertises” our business even if you don’t realize it. Every bit of content advertises something, whether on purpose or not.
#4 Content needs to be useful/engaging/interesting. This simply ties all of that together. If you want anyone to pay attention to your content (which is advertising something, whether on purpose or not) it needs to be compelling and engaging.

I love how fast things move these days. I would have predicted it would take another year or two for the mainstream ad industry press to pick this up. Up until now, widgets have been the story. In the world today, things that make sense move very very quickly.

So here are my next questions:

• The press already has got the “useful” mantra? When will they start understanding the subtlety that it’s software, not traditional content (articles, videos, etc.) that makes online experiences useful in a cost-effective fashion?
• Once the press realizes the distinction, what will they call the software component of these useful ads? (Or do they already get it and are just calling it all “content”?)
• Who will build these interactive experiences? Will the agencies realize how far many of them are from having this type of expertise in-house? Will their clients realize that the agencies don’t (yet) have the chops to produce these types of experiences?

If you want some examples of advertisers and agencies not realizing how hard it is to make high quality software, check out our Branded Software Experience Index. Let It Out (actual software done horribly be the Kleenex folks) and Bud.TV (all content, no interesting software, and $60 million to boot) are my favorite examples of bad attempts. It’s still early though… I have no doubt there’s much better stuff to come.