I posted this on the article's comments: Well I can gather two things from this article. 1, the Washington Post is very definitely not involved in the digital

I posted this on the article's comments: Well I can gather two things from this article. 1, the Washington Post is very definitely not involved in the digital advertising industry; 2, the Washington Post does not deal with a decent digital marketing agency. "Lazy" is a remarkably strong term for many agencies whom, in my experience, often work around the clock to deliver on tight deadlines and low budgets, as clients still do not consider digital as important as above-the-line media. With extreme constraints, some of the most interesting conceptual work tends to come from digital agencies, who are forced to push limits in a constantly changing environment, with high demands from an intelligent user base who are not interested in simplistic and overdone banner advertising (which seems to be the focus of this article!). Innovation is exactly the name of the game when it comes to digital marketing. Take Farfar's tremendously successful campaign for Diesel (http://www.farfar.se/awards/cannes2007/heidies/ http://www.farfar.se/awards/cannes2007/heidies/), or R/GA's Nike+ campaign, which received numerous awards and incredible ROI (Google it), or Crispin Porter and Refresh Partners' Whopper Sacrifice Facebook campaign for Burger King, that was so successful in its execution that Facebook had to kill the application, or even AKQA's campaign for VW, which relied on nothing but an iPhone app (http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=324848336756&ref=mf http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=324848336756&r...) These are but a few of the very successful, innovative, forward-thinking digital marketing campaigns and strategies out there, that are so far beyond a simple banner ad and truly identify the kind of industry that digital is all about. The question "Why is digital advertising so lousy?" is a useless question, and is simply responded to by the fact that only lousy digital advertising is lousy, very similar to lousy advertising in other types of media. Just think of the pamphlets that are handed out on streets, or left under your car's windscreen wiper, or the terrible infomercials on TV or adverts with bad acting, or big billboards with no thought behind them.