So much bad stuff in here. Worth a read

investigation by Craig Silverman lnkd.in/eVDyfqbd note that DESPITE paying for all that craptech fraud detection and brand safety detection tech,

ahem @mikezaneis @tag_today @safe_brands

all of this was still happening.

and it was uncovered and documented by an outside reporter @CraigSilverman through hard work

2017 "oopsies"

In latest metrics glitch, Facebook says it overcharged some advertisers
cbsnews.com/news/in-latest… 2020 "oopsies," nothing happened

Facebook’s Latest Error Shakes Advertisers’ Confidence
wsj.com/amp/articles/f…

Fraud detection that doesn't detect fraud
forbes.com/sites/augustin… How two small businesses beat ad fraud themselves WITHOUT paying for expensive fraud detection
linkedin.com/pulse/how-two-…

yes, there will be a catastrophic domino effect on ad tech companies, including public ones

basically, it's clear some have all their eggs in one basket; the basket is heading toward catastrophic failure

more evidence of widespread fraud is being docume…lnkd.in/d7UFJbne note that bad guys love buying up small, struggling publishers that have real (but small) human audiences

that provides the perfect cover for fraudulent activities

they takeover the formerly legit site, and juice the numbers for various forms of fraud to make money

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)

advertising is the wrong answer

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

Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC
digiday.com/media/amazon-i… zdnet.com/article/brave-…

friendly reminder
slideshare.net/augustinefou/w… all the tracking was completely unnecessary to begin with

What Is “Surveillance Capitalism?” And How Did It Hijack the Internet?
linuxjournal.com/content/what-s…

@ElaineDMoore just because ad tech THINKS their tech makes ads more targeted, it doesn't mean the ads are actually well targeted

poor, gullible marketers bought it "hook, line, and sinker"

linkedin.com/pulse/hyper-ta… @ElaineDMoore Behavioral advertising: The mirage built by Google
digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2019/06/0…

oldie but still goodie click analysis

@zsk the money-making does work for some influencers; and there are many aspiring influencers

but once they start to buy followers to make their influence look greater than it really is, the whole thing devolves (for them, the advertisers, and the users tricked into buying) @zsk follower fraud has been happening since web 2.0

and now, it's fully automated by bots, managing vast quantities of fake accounts

nytimes.com/interactive/20…

oh lovely, adtech works

in my 1 cent CPM experimental campaign, you can see the price paid to the publisher - around 0.8 cent CPMs

this 20% goes to 1 intermediary (the DSP); this is the shortest possible programmatic supply chain

data from #FouAnalytics what do I get for 1 cent CPM ads?

oh goody, look at these devices/IP addresses loading my ad 100s of times, despite my having set freq cap of 1 (lifetime)

this is so hilarious, it's not even funny

bad guys don't have to run any ads or use any bots to make lots of money

they've already optimized this supremely. How? they are flooding the networks with faked bid requests

imagine 1 million QPS (queries per second), all computational (minimal bandwidth used)

@RioLongacre @garicruze confirmed.

that is a great example -- basic "due diligence" is what is needed to see the fraud and do something about it

forbes.com/sites/augustin… @RioLongacre @garicruze and confirmed, less than 50% of an advertiser's dollar goes to "working media" (showing digital ads) when they buy through the long, complex, and non-transparent programmatic supply chain

forbes.com/sites/augustin…

good publishers don't have a big bot problem; they've been consistently clean all along

forbes.com/sites/augustin…

a short story, in 5 frames

1/5 2/5

I literally don't know what they are smoking to make this statement

“The trade in traffic hasn’t been eliminated, but it is substantially harder to buy fake traffic and it’s substantially more expensive to buy realistic-looking fake traffic that will actually get the buyer paid" the article from @OSchiffey

adexchanger.com/adexchanger-ta…

Throw The Brand Safety Out With The Bath Water
forbes.com/sites/augustin… Local news killed by fake news
- 2,000 newspapers died
- 1,300 local news "deserts"

highlights from Reed Smith's summary of

The case is Phunware Inc., vs. Uber Technologies Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc. vs. Phunware Inc., case number CGC-17-561546, in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of San Francisco.

reedsmith.com/en/news/2021/0… "Uber counterclaimed against Phunware, accusing it ... of wire fraud, racketeering, transporting fraudulently obtained funds across state lines and common law fraud, seeking up to $17 million in compensation as well as additional amounts for punitive damages.

@aginnt Seasonal coronavirus protective immunity is short-lasting
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32929268/ @aginnt Study Finds People Have Short-Lived Immunity to Seasonal Coronaviruses
directorsblog.nih.gov/2020/09/29/stu…

Global App Spending Passed $100 Billion in 2020
statista.com/chart/22377/gl… what is the FIRST thought that should come to mind when you see a stat like the one above?