NEWSLETTER #141/ December 2, 2018
No Images? Click here
IT'S PILING-ON TIME
For almost 10 years, certain keen observers of the advertising and marketing industry (no names) have been screaming about some things:
- The dangers that data and privacy abuse present to democratic societies.
- The staggering amount of money that is being stolen from advertisers by online ad fraud.
Now that the consequences of these problems are becoming manifest, the people who ignored the warnings for years, and the people who ridiculed critics as clueless Luddites, have now joined the bandwagon and are in piling-on mode.
This week a group of international publicity whores from nine countries put on a made-for-PR political stunt in London to show how tough they are on Facebook. The event accomplished exactly nothing other than grab some headlines and get the faces of the pols in the newspaper.
Meanwhile the FBI, who have been ignoring the appalling amount of cyber crime for over a decade, grabbed some cheap headlines by finally doing something. They arrested a few Russian hoods and called it a "massive" ad fraud sting. This looks to me like more PR bullshit. As far as I can tell, the FBI's operation was chicken feed.
Ad fraud is a mega-billion dollar industry and this sting nabbed some guys that by all accounts were responsible for $29 million a year in fraud. It's not even a drop in the ocean. But now advertisers can talk themselves into believing that the FBI is on the case -- while they continue to piss away billions.
In other piling-on news, as predicted in last week's newsletter, Sheryl Sandberg is being set up to take the fall for Zuckerbot. This week AdAge ran a piece re-printed from Bloomberg under the headline, "Facebook employees blame Sheryl Sandberg for company's downfall." The Guardian published "Sheryl Sandberg Saga Shows It's Time To Lean Out Of Corporate Feminism." Respected analyst Brian Wieser said about Facebook, "Placing the blame on Sandberg would be a convenient path forward for them."
Q: What's The Difference Between A Millennial And A Baby Boomer?
A: Money
A report by the Federal Reserve this week debunked a lot of the insufferable horseshit we've had to endure for the past decade about the new species of human beings called Millennials.
"Millennials are no different from their baby boomer parents — they're just poorer." Reads a headline in the Financial Post about the report.
The authors of the report say, “We find little evidence that millennial households have tastes and preference for consumption that are lower than those of earlier generations...”
Research and strategy hustlers have been unrelenting in selling baloney about Millennials to marketers -- which is what they do every time they conjure up a "new generation." It's good business.
As we've been saying for years, there's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend.
JWT Just A Memory
A few weeks ago WPP killed Y&R. This week they killed JWT. They pasted it together with Wunderman. It is now called Wunderman Thompson. It's a wunderfully terrible name but I guess it's better than their last abortion -- VLMY&R
For a rant on how the agency business has destroyed some of its most valuable brands, read this.
The Pornography Superhighway
According to SimilarWeb, of the top eight websites in America (by traffic) three are pornographic.
Once you get past the big 5 --- Google, Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, and Yahoo -- what you have left is porn.
The Security Blooperhighway
Everything we've ever been told by the tech industry about online privacy and security is total bullshit. This week it was announced that Marriott has been leaking information - include mailing addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and passport numbers - of half a billion people.
No one should be surprised at the security breach. It seems to happen every day with these dimwits. The shocking thing is that this has been going on since 2014.
"We deeply regret this incident happened...We fell short of what our guests deserve and what we expect of ourselves. We are doing everything we can to support our guests, and using lessons learned to be better moving forward," said a Marriott PR hack. These bullshit artists are always "moving forward."
"It's astonishing how long it took them to discover they were breached," said the executive director of Privacy International. "For four years, data was being pilfered out of the company, and they didn't notice. They can say all they want that they take security seriously, but they don't if you can be hacked over a four-year period without noticing."
Quickies
- The Drum reports that according to a research firm called Streetbees "98% of Facebook users that no longer trust the platform to protect their personal data say they will continue to use it anyway."
- For some real-world talk about ad fraud, I highly recommend this podcast conversation between Digiday's Brian Morrissey and BuzzFeed's Craig Silverman.
- After a decade of conning the ad industry with bullshit audience metrics, it looks like Facebook may finally be corralled. They have cleared a first hurdle to getting certification from MRC, the body that validates audience measurement.
Too Early To Start My Black Friday Sale?
Black Friday has become the longest day of the year. It seems like it lasted a couple of months this year. And according to research reported here last week, Black Friday prices are no better than White Wednesday or Taupe Tuesday. So here at The Ad Contrarian World Headquarters we're bringing transparency to marketing with a new disruptive strategy to peddle our books.
1. Every day is Black Friday
2. The goddam price is always the same
BTW, modesty almost forbids me to mention that your favorite newsletter writer had two of the top five advertising ebooks at Amazon this week. Fortunately my modesty has its limits.
