LIES OF OUR LEADERS

On Monday a coalition of advertising trade organizations including the ANA, the 4As, and the IAB announced that they had formed a group called "Privacy for America." Try not to vomit. These are the very people who have fought against every initiative ever introduced to protect the public from the ugly surveillance tactics of the online ad industry. These are the people who are funding that which they are now pretending to be against.

This cynical PR gimmick has five purposes:
     1. To thwart real attempts to protect privacy which are now working their way through state legislatures.
     2. To solidify their ability to monetize our private information by lobbying for weak federal action. This will have the hidden effect of codifying the 3-headed monster of adtech, tracking, and surveillance marketing.
     3. To continue to deflect their responsibility for the ongoing privacy scandals by making online publishers the fall guys, while they - the marketers - continue to  subsidize the process.
     4. To protect their billion dollar investments in the surveillance marketing -- oops, excuse me -- data gathering business.
     5. To put a friendly face on their double-dealing.

Let's be clear about this. Facebook, Google, and all the other privacy-abusing online publishers are 100% reliant on the ad industry for survival. Essentially all their revenue comes from advertising. Without ad dollars, they would die in 30 seconds. If the ANA and 4As were serious about ending the dreadful, dangerous practices they are professing to oppose, they could do it in a heartbeat. All it would take would be a one-line memo to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the other major online publishers, "You either clean this shit up in 30 days or we're out."

Instead, they continue to blow hot air and hide behind Facebook's skirts and let Facebook and the rest of the online publishing industry take the heat for all the crap they're bankrolling.

All you need to know about the seriousness of this effort is that the ANA and 4As are in bed with the IAB on this. Teaming up with the IAB to protect privacy is like teaming up with the KKK to fight discrimination.

The membership of the ANA includes virtually every serious advertiser in America. They spend tens of billions of dollars on advertising annually -- a great deal of it online. They have substantially more power to control the direction of online publishers than any government agency. But like immature children everywhere, they want it both ways -- they want the benefits of surveillance marketing without the consequences of surveillance marketing.

This "Privacy for America" horseshit is just a smokescreen -- a way for them to duck responsibility for the dangerous practices they are underwriting. It is a disgraceful show of irresponsibility which everyone in the marketing and advertising industry ought to be ashamed of. I know I am.

Pritchard has made a second career out of empty threats against the online ad industry. Every year he threatens to pull P&G's money off the web and every year the digi-fatcats say, "Marc, you really nailed us this time," then go off to the bar, have a good chuckle and buy themselves new Gulfstreams.

Pritchard came armed with a 5-step program to clean up the online ad ecosystem which has about as much chance of going anywhere as I have of being crowned Queen of France.

ANA CEO Bob Liodice said, “The ANA fully supports Marc’s vision and call to action...His framework is completely consistent with ANA’s mission and leadership agenda as outlined in ANA’s Masters Circle initiative.”  Someone remind me to shoot myself.

"These video channels all share one thing in common: It is almost impossible to find out who is behind them," says the Journal. Such is the nature of so-called "transparency" on the web, that no one knows who produces most children's videos.

The Journal goes on to say, "On the 'Kids Diana Show' channel—where a little girl pretends to play with toys like a hot-pink Barbie car or gets surprise deliveries of Disney toys—the 'about' page says it is located in the U.S. but includes links in Russian. Efforts to reach anyone at Kids Diana Show were unsuccessful, as were efforts for many of the other top shows."

According to the Journal, they tried to reach the producers of the top 10 YouTube videos for kids and were only able to reach one of them. Seven channels didn't answer calls or emails, and two refused to speak.

Of course, YouTube has no responsibility for knowing who's posting videos for children on their site because they're not a medium... oh no, they're a platform! Whatever the fuck that means.

The service launches in the fall with an amazing array of product including the entire libraries of Disney, Pixar, and Star Wars, plus the Simpsons and the 20th Century Fox catalog.   

This could lead to a subscription TV price war. What would a price war among ad-free subscription TV services mean? Sooner or later, advertising.

Bloomberg spoke secretly to people who did this work and were required by Amazon to sign non-disclosure agreements. Here's what they found out  --  "they work nine hours a day, with each reviewer parsing as many as 1,000 audio clips per shift, according to two workers based at Amazon’s Bucharest office." Anyone who's surprised by this is a moron.

Then on Thursday I'll be in Tallinn, Estonia speaking to the Eesti Ekspress group. The talk will be called "Delusional: How Marketers Are Wasting Billions on Fraud and Fairy Tales."

I enjoyed my talk at NAB in Las Vegas last week. Thanks to the great people at WideOrbit that sponsored it. While I was there the editor of Radio INK grabbed me for an impromptu podcast. You can listen to it here.

For Bob's website go here. For info on having Bob speak, go here.
For all previous newsletters go here.  For Bob's blog go here.