THE GOOD IN ONLINE ADVERTISING

The best part of online advertising is that it funds an amazing array of free stuff.

Sadly, online advertising has been so debased by creeps and crooks, and oversold by hustlers and liars that it is sometimes difficult for us to appreciate the good in it. If we could eliminate the creeps, crooks and hustlers, and allow the web to provide what it is capable of providing...well, that's what this post is about.

A look at the numbers illustrates clearly how much we value what we get online. The average person in America now spends almost four hours a day online. This is not inconsiderable. And we wouldn't be here if we weren't getting  substantial value from it.

The key piece is this: Virtually everything we enjoy about the web is paid for by advertising. Whether you hate advertising or love it, there is one simple truth that must be acknowledged -- we pay for very little online. Advertising provides the revenue needed for companies to create the stuff we like and use. This is why it is sensible to preserve an ad-supported web.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with online advertising. But there is something terribly wrong with the flavor of online advertising that we have evolved.

Essentially there are two kinds of online advertising. The good kind supports quality publishers, does not spy on us or track our every move, and respects our privacy by not collecting unnecessary personal, private information (what the marketing industry loves to call "data".) It doesn't share it, sell it, or leak it into the digi-sphere.

The bad kind of online advertising is only superficially advertising. It is mostly tracking-based spyware disguised as advertising distributed primarily by machines ("programmatically.")

The bad kind is the kind that the online media industry has defaulted to. It relentlessly follows us around the web and collects unnecessary personal and private information about us usually without our knowledge and consent. And it shares, sells, and leaks this information promiscuously in all directions. ("Big Tech's War On Privacy" in the NY Times Magazine today is a pretty good story.)

It supports the shittiest publishers by using software to find the cheapest, crappiest environments to distribute ads to, thereby stealing money from quality publishers and giving birth to self-inflicted brand safety issues.

Because its primary model is data-based direct marketing (what we used to call junk mail) it leads to a style of "click here" advertising that magnifies the most annoying and irritating aspects of advertising.

The politics of online advertising is the part that I find most bewildering. For over a decade, the powerful players in the advertising world have been working relentlessly against their self-interest.

Advertisers would be much better served if they knew where their ads were running; if their budgets were spent influencing consumers rather than supporting adtech middlemen; if their ads were appearing on high quality sites instead of being "programmatically" strewn all over trash sites; if tens of billions of dollars weren't being stolen by criminals with fraudulent websites and imaginary viewers; if hundreds of millions of people were not blocking their ads.

All of these problems could be substantially mitigated by doing one simple thing -- ending tracking. And yet the moment there is a suggestion of setting some limitations on the ability of online advertisers, media, and publishers to spy on us, the advertisers rise up through their tainted trade organizations (4A's, ANA) to oppose it.

The same is true of publishers. Quality online publishers are having their audiences and revenue stolen from them through data leakage (in which tracking follows valuable customers to cheaper sites and reaches them there;) they are victims of criminal activities like fraudulent lookalike websites stealing their audiences and ad revenues; they are losing more than half their potential revenue to the sinkhole of adtech middlemen; they have lost control of their brand identities by allowing automated systems to determine who and what can be advertised on their sites; and they are losing revenue as ad blocking grows unabated.

And yet, once again, the moment the subject of limiting the slimy hand of tracking and adtech comes up, they mostly oppose what is clearly in their own best interest.

Online advertising doesn't have to...

   - be despised by the public
   - subvert democratic institutions
   - enable corruption and fraud
   - place personal and private information about us within the reach of criminals
   - devalue the work of legitimate online publishers
   - waste billions of dollars of advertisers' value on fraud
   - degrade our news media and journalism

Online advertising supports so many good things we enjoy and appreciate about the web. It gives us entertainment and information. It allows us to befriend people we would otherwise never know.

It would take so little for the online ad industry to do so much good -- for itself and for the public. We have decades of evidence that tracking is not necessary for advertising success. TV never tracked us. Radio never tracked us. Newspapers and magazines never tracked us.

Even if the current version of tracking-based advertising was amazingly effective (which it most certainly is not) in what dreadful political philosophy is the convenience of marketers more important than the privacy rights of citizens?

We need to get rid of tracking -- not advertising -- to make the web what it ought to be.

And Now The Bad...

* The Norwegian Consumer Council issued a report called "Deceived By Design" in which it claims, "Facebook, Google and Microsoft push users away from privacy-friendly options on their services in an 'unethical' way." According to the BBC, the Norwegian Council found examples of...
   - privacy-friendly choices being hidden away
   - privacy-intrusive defaults with a longer process for users who want privacy-friendly options
   - some privacy settings being obscured
   - pop-ups compelling users to make certain choices, while key information is omitted or downplayed
   - threats of loss of functionality or deletion of the user account if certain settings not chosen

* The New York Times reported on how fake YouTube views are screwing advertisers out of zillions of dollars.
   - Fraudulent video "plays can be bought for pennies and delivered in bulk, inflating videos’ popularity and making the social media giant vulnerable to manipulation."
   - "At one point in 2013, YouTube had as much traffic from bots masquerading as people as it did from real human visitors..."
   - Said one purveyor of fake views, “I can deliver an unlimited amount of views to a video...They’ve tried to stop it for so many years, but they can’t stop it."

Of course Google, who owns YouTube, claim they're doing everything they can to fight this fraud. As usual, it is utter laughable bullshit. In fact, they are complicit in promoting the fraud. Don't believe me? Take five seconds right now and look here.

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