(The-MakeGood.com) - The 2008 election ushered in an era of internet-based voter engagement, but that was about a million years ago in terms of how quickly the web has come to dominate nearly every aspect of campaign strategy, voter opinion gathering and messaging machinery.

Today, if marketers, publishers and brands want to profit from what’s already been hailed as America’s first truly digital presidential election, then we too have to be prepared to service the 24/7 candidate and political party campaigns that want to turn on a dime their estimated $9.8 billion for targeted advertising to support the 2012 campaign.

At Centro, the largest digital media logistics provider for federal and state political candidates and causes, we know that during what is anticipated to be the most expensive campaign season in United States history, political clients will be searching for publishing partners they can trust to get time-sensitive messaging into the marketplace on very short notice. This means the digital publishing industry needs to improve operations if it wants the trickle of political dollars to turn into a flood.

Recently, we submitted a hard-hitting piece of political creative to a well-known news website. Three days in advance of the start date, the site accidentally ran the creative live carrying with it competitive ramifications. The mistake was caught around 8 p.m., but though Centro started scrambling that minute, we couldn’t get a hold of any of the sales or ad operations representatives at the publisher. After emailing every contact and calling every number we could think of, we finally got a hold of someone at the site’s newsroom at 1 a.m. and at 1:30 a.m. the ad was removed – after running for more than five hours.

Read the remainder of the article on TheMakeGood.

Even as we rush headlong towards 2013, the speed-of-light changes in our industry demand we all become visionaries, able to look past what I like to call “The Great Disruption” – the immediate and ever-evolving commotion in the media landscape – to the horizon: 2017.

That’s exactly what I’ll be talking about when representatives from 2,000 local newspapers and their digital products gather in Atlanta from September 11th to the 14th for the 2012 Local Media Fall Publishers’ & Advertising Directors’ Conference.

Sure, we all instinctively know that the next 5 years will cause the greatest disruption yet – far more than anything we have seen date. But the question on everyone’s mind – the one I’ll answer during my presentation is: What will things look like when the dust settles?

For starters, the tablet, which is already proving to be powerfully disruptive, will unveil its full range of tremendous opportunities. In fact, the one thing you can count on in 2017 is that all media will be changed in unimaginable ways – some will simply go away and others will transform into entities that are nearly unimaginable today.

During my session, you’ll get exclusive insight into my vision for the 2017 media landscape, including how I foresee media consolidating in the wake of the fragmentation process, how companies will have to adjust their cost structures, and how “the cloud” will become a day-to-day reality in all aspects of our work and play. I’m already using these upcoming realities to prepare Centro for the massive changes ahead and you probably hope to do the same. Join me.

Great read by Mike Shields: Making the Wrong Impression - How sites with dubious content are attracting ads from blue-chip brands

Obviously, great writing like this has many low quality players scared based on the comments received.  Mike Shields is shedding light on things a lot of companies, many of the brand name ad tech companies, don’t want people to know.  But, that’s why journalism exists.  And that’s why high-quality, journalistic-based media companies deserve better than how the current SSP/DSP market is treating them.

Premium brand advertisers deserve premium quality sites and environments. If someone thinks it’s only about the audience and the environment doesn’t matter, they don’t understand how marketing works.

Mike, keep calling it as you see it. You’re on the right side of history as the industry matures and weeds out bottom feeding companies. Thanks for a great read!