NEWSLETTER #195 / February 16, 2020 No images? Click here HOW TO BLOW $120 MILLION ONLINE In "Advertising's Untold Stories" I wrote, "In marketing, the untold stories are usually the real story." That's because the stories that get told -- the nonsense that the trade press publishes and the "case histories" we hear at conferences -- are profoundly skewed by the habit of human beings to publicize their successes, not their failures. The stories we read and hear represent wildly unrepresentative samples. Now there's a unique opportunity to listen to a real-world story of the type you rarely get to hear. Kevin Frisch, the former head of performance marketing and CRM at Uber, tells the story of how ad fraud (specifically attribution fraud) was headed toward eating $120 million of Uber's $150 million online ad budget. You can find it at the Marketing Today podcast, hosted by the great Alan Hart. Most marketers have no idea how deeply they're being screwed by online ad fraud. They don't even know where to look. Listening to Frisch tell his story brings it all to life. "We turned off 2/3 of our spend, we turned off 100 million of annual spend out of 150, and basically saw no change..." And the wonderful thing about his story is that he explains why nobody gave a shit -- not agencies, not marketers -- about how much money was being pissed away. If you want to know what's really going on in online advertising, it's a must listen. The Uber Con Job - Almost nobody "rideshares" -- 70-80% of rides are taken by individuals. Oscars Fall to New Low According to Nielsen, about 23.6 million people watched the show. This was down 10% from the previous low of 26.5 million in 2018. Historically the Academy Awards has attracted the second largest TV audience annually, after the Super Bowl. But in the last five years the number of viewers has dropped by over 1/3. Mighty Marcel Update MediaPost had an update on Marcel this week. According to the article, Marcel is being rolled out globally by Publicis because of its amazing success. “We are pretty excited,” said a Publicis exec. And why is she so excited? According to MediaPost, employees "were thrilled with a better way to fill out timesheets" and they loved an online job board that lists openings "one week before they go public." All this for a mere $20 million. You can't make this... you know the rest. Short Stories In other news this week... - IPG Mediabrands is making mumbo-jumbo pseudo-neuroscientific claims about the effectiveness of 2 second video ads. I don't have the energy to point out the stupidity in the research, but take my word for it, it's bullshit. On The Bookshelf I was hoping to have my new book, "Advertising For Skeptics" out this week, but it looks like another week or two. Please don't cry. But while we're in the library...last year I contributed to a book called Eat Your Greens by Weimer Snijders. Several of the other contributors who aren't just blowhards like me (they actually know stuff!) recently have published new books. Rory Sutherland has written "Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life". Eaon Pritchard has released "Shot By Both Sides". Paul Feldwick has produced an audio book of his wonderful "The Anatomy of Humbug". Also, I contributed to a recently released book by Sheila Byfield, "In With The Old, In With The New." My advice: read something. |