Thread by @nandoodles

NEW: Gateway Pundit's disinformation is still pulling in ad revenues via a dark pool sales house called LiftableMedia(.)com.

Liftable is a front for multiple disinformation outlets – and it's how GP continues to monetize without raising red flags w/ major adtech co's.

Liftable Media, a little media house that describes itself as a company that seeks to "drive positive cultural change." For most advertisers, this looks fine!

Most advertisers (+ agencies, DSPs, SSPs) are unlikely to look closer.

If they did, they would learn that the same guy who runs Liftable Media also runs Western Journal, widely known to be a disinformation outlet.

Liftable Media is largely a front for Western Journal, which it's open about on its pitch deck to advertisers (I've linked to it here) 👇🏼

However, there's no mention of Gateway Pundit anywhere. So how do I know there's a relationship here?
docs.google.com/presentation/d…

It's bc nearly every Gateway Pundit ads.txt entry links to Liftable Media. Like these ones from @MGID and @Connatix.

See? This means they're not sending cash directly to GP — they're sending the cash to Liftable Media, which makes payouts to GP.

It looks like at some point in the last few years, Gateway Pundit and Liftable Media struck up a deal without telling anybody.

The Plan: Liftable Media lets GP use its DIRECT SellerIDs on its website > pools all the GP ad $$ into its own account > splits the total $$ w/ GP.

Normally, adtech co's DGAF about the whole *monetizing dangerous anti-vaxx disinfo thing* — but in this case, this setup is very much their problem.

1.) These adtech co's are mislabeling Liftable Media as a "PUBLISHER" when it's now an "INTERMEDIARY" for Gateway Pundit.

This is something adtech co's are terrified of being caught doing bc it's kinda sorta *fraud*. Like @kargo here, which changed its labels days after I outed them.

Advertisers pay a premium for Direct/Publisher buys — and mislabeling = lying.

https://twitter.com/nandoodles/status/1425974967720685570?s=20

The second problem here is that LiftableMedia(.)com does not have an ads.txt (which all "Publishers" should) or even sellers.json file. Just...nothing.

How can advertisers cross-check their ad buy w/ this entity? They can't. This puts them at risk of fraud.

There are a lot of bad players in the ecosystem, which puts the onus on ad exchanges to root them out on behalf of their clients.

But many exchanges are actually partaking in the mislabeling scheme & declaring Liftable Media a Publisher — at the expense of their own clients.

As Liftable Media's inventory exclusively represents disinformation & has misrepped itself, the following ad platforms MUST drop the entity as a whole and begin issuing refunds to clients:

•@connatix
•@mgid
•@Adyoulike (shown here)

•TheMediaGrid (powered by @IPONWEB)
•@apestermag

•@yieldmo
•@sonobi

Since I'm running low on time and patience to do screenshots, here are the rest:

•@Teads
•@triplelifthq
•@xandr (prev. AppNexus)
•@AccessUndertone

All the biggest names in adtech = in bed w/ Gateway Pundit and you'd never know it!

This is not a one-off thing either. Working thru dark pool sales houses is a common tactic used by disinformation outlets to keep funneling ad revenues even as they are discovered & blocked by advertisers.

We wrote about it here:
branded.checkmyads.org/p/so-thats-how…