Should we vertically integrate in online advertising?

While Google and Yahoo are trying to be media companies and advertising agency in one, traditional players in the media sector have to respect their legacy/background. At least that is what Publicis Groupe is planning to do as they want to play a significant role in the “all-digital advertising future” as can be read in a New York Times profile of Publicis . Not by vertical integration but by sticking to their profession of being an ad agency. How does that work for traditional media companies getting involved in digital media? Should they stick to what they are best at: producing and aggregating media or should they develop their own ad networks? And if they do try to integrate media and advertising in the way that Google and Yahoo are doing: how trustworthy will they be? Questions that popped up as I read Scott Karp’s post on the topic today:

“Pull up a bowl of popcorn — the transformation of media and advertising is only getting more interesting.”

p.s. off-shore digital ad production seems to be good business to get into, if more ad agencies will follow Publicis’ steps

Magazine Publishing is Content Aggregation

The future of media will be determined by how well legacy media companies survive the unbundling of their business models, how much better legacy companies like News Corp who have acquired a platform (MySpace) can restructure their business, and the degree to which the new native platform media companies like Google can position themselves to dominate the new media landscape.

According to Scott Karp, legacy media companies need to deal with the unbundling of their business model. But what is this business model in case of a magazine publisher?