AGENCY TRUST AT NEW LOW

And thus began The Comedy Circus of Transparency...

• The IAB proclaimed  "Transparency Is The Key To Programmatic Success"
• The 4As issued the "4A’s Transparency Guiding Principles of Conduct"
• Sir Martin Sorrell, then CEO of WPP, said "it’s important to be transparent."
• Keith Weed of Unilever "...demand(ed) more transparency" from digital media. 
• Marc Pritchard of P&G, gave an "...impassioned speech on transparency."
• Google, issued a "Transparency Report"
• And to complete the circle of comic absurdity, Mark Zuckerberg said he wanted to bring Facebook to an "even higher standard of transparency." Even higher than what? Zero?

All this blather and posturing was intended to engender deeper and more abiding trust within the rotting carcass of the online advertising ecosystem. Well, by all accounts the The Comedy Circus of Transparency has achieved exactly nothing. In fact things have gotten worse. A lot worse.

A report issued by the ANA last week claims that among their members who reported a change of trust in their agencies, over twice as many said they now have less trust rather than more.

Here is the calculation that smart clients are making, and that is so horribly harmful to the agency industry: "Every day I read reports by outsiders in newspapers and the trade press exposing scandals, fraud, and corruption in online advertising media. And yet none of it is ever revealed by my agency, or any other agency, or any agency trade body -- the very people who are closest to the media industry and are supposed to be experts looking out for my best interests. How can this possibly be?"

It's a damn good question.

And if you belief the Zuckerberg horseshit that the adtech ecosystem has to collect unconscionable amounts of "data" about us because it makes online advertising more "relevant", check out this number. Of the 12 reasons people who use ad blockers gave for using them, the second most mentioned (and just one percentage point from being the first) was that the ads are "annoying or irrelevant."

Let me say what I've said a thousand times. Online advertising is valuable and necessary because it funds an amazing array of utilities and enjoyable experiences that otherwise would not be available to us for free. The problem is not advertising per sé. The problem is the current model of surveillance-based online advertising -- based on tracking and spying -- which leads to a certain kind of extremely annoying, dangerous, relentless, and dreadful advertising.

Someone creates an app that people download. The way they make money is by selling banner ads to marketers that appear within that app. But "hidden from view behind that banner, fraudsters conceal autoplaying video ads that no human being actually sees, but which register as having been served and viewed." The owner of the app "gets paid for the small banner ad in his app...but the fraudsters earn many times that amount by stuffing far more lucrative video ads behind the banner. Ultimately, it’s the brands whose ads were shown in hidden video players that lose money to those running the scheme." The creator of the app often doesn't know what the fraudsters are up to.

“Fraudsters are purchasing cheap in-app display inventory and are filling it with multiple video players behind innocuous fake branded display ads,” said the CEO of the company that discovered the fraud.

But don't worry. It's not you who's getting screwed. You're too smart. It's always someone else.

This week, it was reported that Facebook had left hundreds of millions of user's passwords unencrypted. According to NBC, "Facebook employees built applications that captured the passwords of users and stored them as plain text...Most companies encrypt passwords to prevent them from being stolen in the event of a data breach or used for nefarious purposes by company employees." The unencrypted passwords were accessible to 2,000 engineers and developers and god knows how many hackers.

In typical Facebook fashion, they said nothing about this until they were forced to by a blogger reporting it. Also in typical Facebook fashion, they claim that "no user passwords were leaked." I wouldn't bet my 401k on that.

And then there's this...

Zuckerberg's solution to every instance of incompetence and irresponsibility is always the same -- AI. This week Facebook had to explain why its much vaunted AI expertise was ineffective in detecting the video of the horrific Mosque slaughter of 50 people before it was viewed 4,000 times.

According to CNBC, Facebook said "...its AI requires a large amount of content to learn patterns that would help it detect harmful content, which is difficult to do in the case of relatively rare mass shootings." Which is essentially saying that it is useless.

The great Don Marti had a better explanation. "If Facebook hired enough moderators to handle the number of users and advertisers they have, their revenue per employee would be lousy and the stock market would dump them like a hot rock. So they have to keep promising that AI will take over moderation any day now."

If you want to translate Zuckerberg's bullshit into English, every time he says "AI" just substitute "magic."

Tragic follow-up...

The next day it was reported that a woman in Florida committed suicide and live-streamed it on Facebook

Quote of the Week

From the great Mark Ritson: "True brand purpose doesn't boost profit, it sacrifices it." Read the article here.

Investors, realizing what a feeble joke a fine of that size was to a behemoth like Google, started buying. By the end of the day, Google shares had risen 2%, which added $17 billion to its value. So the cash benefit of the fine was 10 times greater than the cost. No, friends, you can't make this shit up.

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