Every single detail below is the same as every other company committing ad fraud, but labeled "valid" bc of failed detection by verification companies.
Phunware is a public company
PHUN (NASDAQ)
"In order to defraud Uber, ... Defendants engaged in a multi-year fraud scheme, which among other laws, violated the federal criminal wire fraud, interstate transportation of funds
obtained by fraud, and racketeering statutes, as well as common law fraud."
"Defendants purportedly purchased ad placements on behalf of Uber, which were in fact not real ads, were illegitimate ads, and/or were prohibited ads, such as “auto-redirects” or ads placed on prohibited sites such as pornographic websites."
"Defendants instead caused to be written, wrote and ran masking software known as “scripts” to alter the names of the sites or apps where the ads allegedly appeared in order to trick Uber into believing the advertising was legitimate."
"Defendants caused to be provided and provided so called “transparency” information to Fetch, knowing it would be submitted to Uber, containing false information as to where the ads allegedly appear."
"Defendants engaged in similar mobile advertising fraud with at least three other nationally known companies."
"Phunware is a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Austin, Texas. Phunware formerly was known as “Tapit.” The Uber account was Phunware’s largest single source of revenue."
Tons more detail in the lawsuit document, read it for yourself. Practically every detail shows you how ad fraud is STILL being perpetrated on unprecedented scale.
This is 2019 folks. Digital ad spend is at its highest point ever; and so is ad fraud - both in dollars and rate of
Phunware, Inc. is registered under the ticker NASDAQ:PHUN . Their stock opened with $10.00 in its Dec 27, 2018 IPO.
Investors before the IPO vs poor suckers who bought the stock after the IPO
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TAG Certifications are worse than utterly useless; they trick advertisers into thinking Google is "brand safe" because they have the Brand Safety Certification
it covers up the money continuing to flow to piracy, porn, etc.
I drew this chart in 2015, showing 2/3 of digital ad dollars being siphoned out of the ecosystem into the pockets of bad guys (with the help of adtech intermediaries)
there's not enough humans on earth and hours in a day for them to consume so much media to generate the quantities of impressions (by one estimate 15 trillion bid requests per week)
2/3 of the impressions are "something else" (not humans)
bad guys are so optimized now, they dont even need to load webpages or even the ads themselves (to save time and bandwidth)
if ads paid the bills, publishers are incentivized to generate more pageviews/imps to get more revenue - divisive and fake content always generate more pageviews
it's really hard to "hold the line" on quality journalism when it means less revs
at this point, nobody wants to be responsible for "the good of society"
because everyone is too busy making more money for themselves -- i.e. capitalism
quality journalism doesn't pay right now, because no one values it -- neither advertiser, nor consumer
advertisers want cheap ads to buy, so they don't buy much from real publishers
consumers get their news through FB and Google News, read just the headline and never click to the full article
young consumers watch funny tiktok videos 6in from their faces 22 hrs a day