It wasn’t that long ago that advertisers invested in producing truly creative print ads, radio spots and TV commercials to engage consumers in a dialog with product marketers and their brands. So artful were these efforts that the Museum of Modern Art built a collection of the best examples.

More recently it was learned that the once presumed family friendly social networks; Facebook, MySpace, Google et al, have been aggregating the personal ID data from site visits and sharing it with their advertising media networks to effectuate higher click-thru rates.

Besides the unethical business practice what should concern all of us is the shift from earning the hearts and minds of consumers through relevant content exchanges to spying on consumer activities in an attempt to ambush their attention as they navigate the net.

Worse still is the thinking that a click is a value metric in building a brand franchise with a consumer. The click doesn’t actually measure a positive or negative brand recall, but it does serve as an accounting methodology.

Roy Grace, creative director of “Spicy Meatballs”– “good advertising is achieved by cooperative effort between agency talent and clients with courage and intelligence. For those that know there are short cuts, but choose not to take them — I’m with you.