A CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE

For the last few years we have been flooded with scandals and revelations about corruption, fraud, and lies in the online advertising ecosystem. In no particular order, here is just a partial list:

• Tens of billions of dollars in online ad fraud.
• Inflated and absurd “metrics” from Facebook
• Advertising dollars spent supporting terrorist, nazi, and pornography sites
• Advertisers unknowingly supporting pedophile rings on YouTube
• Billion dollar fraud in influencer followers
• Traffic fraud
• Criminal federal investigation of Facebook data sharing
• The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office stating that adtech is “illegal” and “out of control”
• Association of National Advertisers claim that corruption and kickbacks were “pervasive” in the advertising industry.
• Massive fraud in social media followers.
• Click farms going 24-hours a day
• Numerous scandals involving online publishers, search engines, and browsers spying on people without their knowledge or consent.
• Sharing of “secure” personal information among web entities
• FBI and Justice Department investigations of media practices.
• Google secretly sharing personal data with advertisers.

The terribly damning part is that there are only two possibilities: Either agencies are remarkably stupid and don't know what is going on, or they know and are keeping their mouths shut. It's hard to decide which is worse.

I believe they have been engaged in an unspoken conspiracy.

Not a single one of the scandals involving online media were brought to light by a media agency. Not one. Let's put this another way -- not one of the scandals about online media were exposed by the people whose job it is to scrutinize online media.

Agencies, particularly media agencies, are as close to the online media industry as you can get. They are analyzing online media 24 hours a day. They are responsible for seeing to it that hundreds of billions of online advertising dollars are spent properly every year. They work very closely with media. They have the facts at their fingertips. They are assessing online media opportunities on behalf of their clients every day.

How can it be that reporters, who are not trained in media, have not nearly the resources to scrutinize media, and have no expertise in analyzing media, were able to sniff out scandal after scandal while the "experts" were not able to do so? It is not possible. It doesn't even pass the giggle test. As one very highly regarded media analyst commented to me recently, "agency bigwigs are notoriously paranoid and fearful. There's a strong code of silence..."

If it were left to the leaders of the ad industry, we would know nothing about any of the appalling stories listed above. By concealing their knowledge of deceit and dishonesty in online media, the ad industry has failed at one of their most consequential responsibilities - being trustworthy stewards of their clients' money. Instead, they have been responsible for wasting billions of client dollars. Why? 

• Because they're afraid to admit they've been played for fools by online media. 
• Because they get fees or commissions on most of the wasted billions.

Is it any wonder marketers are moving media functions in-house? One can only wonder what additional sleaze the media "experts" know of and are keeping quiet about.

The ad industry has allowed itself to crawl into bed with the squids at Facebook and Google and the rest of the devious adtech weasels. It makes us look like fools. Every week there are alarming reports of fraud, corruption, privacy abuse, and security failures in online media and we shrug our shoulders and duck for cover.

The ad industry, controlled by misguided and incompetent leadership at trade associations and holding companies, had better get its act together. By being lapdogs to the corrupt and dangerous online media we are quickly squandering what's left of our credibility.

We are on the wrong side of history and will continue to stay there until the silent conspiracy to protect online media ends.

- YouTube was fined $170 million by the Federal Trade Commission for breaking laws about collecting personal information about children. This joke of a fine will amount to about one-tenth of one percent of Google's (YouTube's parent) annual revenue. It's not even a slap on the wrist and it signals, once again, that FTC regulations are not to be taken seriously.

- According to CNET, Google was discovered to have "secret webpages that feed your personal data to advertisers." This story was broken by the great Dr. Johnny Ryan.

- TechCrunch found an unprotected data base online which contained the phone numbers and user IDs of 419,000,000 Facebook users. Some of the data included names, gender, and country. But don't worry, Facebook said they're sorry. Oh, and don't forget to sign up for Facebook's new dating service. What could go wrong?

- How can we bring the country together? Maybe disgust with the tech creepocracy can do it. According to The Wall Street Journal, "Top state law-enforcement officials from across the country are formally launching antitrust probes into Facebook...and...Google starting next week... A bipartisan group of perhaps more than 40 attorneys general will join...a multistate investigation into whether large tech companies have engaged in anticompetitive behavior that stifled competition, restricted access and harmed consumers.”

Adweek reported this week that a study by USC indicated that Twitter bots have became way more believable as humans. "Politics-focused Twitter bots that warped news coverage and online discussions of the 2016 election have only grown more sophisticated in the few years since..." says Adweek.

USC computer science professor Emilio Ferrara, who headed the study said, "There is an arms race between bots and detection algorithms.”  And guess who's winning?

The rationale for this brilliant idea was some logic-torturing nonsense about climate change. This is just what the climate consciousness movement needs -- imbeciles like this to make them a laughing stock.

But what a great opportunity for agencies. Think of the campaign possibilities...
   - The Man Your Man Can Taste Like
   - Great Taste. Less Fillings
   - Got Milkmen?

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