AD OF THE WEEK

According to AdAge the whole thing started at a Google training session. It seems that a Google trainee pressed a wrong button and accidentally bought zillions of dollars worth of yellow nothing on behalf of an Australian retailer.

Publishers were astounded as the yellow "ad" appeared on thousands of their websites. The good news for those publishers is that Google has said it will make good on the ad space. There were no reported complaints by consumers because, as usual with online ads, nobody noticed it.

This reminds me of one of my favorite ad stories. Back in 2012, three very clever guys decided to do an experiment to gauge "engagement" with banner ads. They bought ad space and ran nothing -- just an all-white area.

They measured the click rate in the blank "ads" versus the click rate for actual Facebook and other ads. Here were some of the results:

• The click-through rate on the blank space was 60% higher than published reports of click rates for Facebook. 

• The click rate for the blank space was about double the click rate for an average "branding" display ad.
   
• The experiment indicated that about  44% of all banner ad clicks are mistakes.

You can't make this shit up. You can read the whole story here.

MediaPost says, "The data comes from monitoring traffic from more than 640 million unique users, 1.2 billion unique devices, and 12 million URLs monthly." But don't be too impressed by these numbers. Despite this huge quantity of data to judge from, fraudsters have become so sophisticated and odiously innovative that all fraud numbers are substantially guesswork. Remember, these numbers are based on indications of fraud that can be detected. The art and science of fraud is to go undetected.

Another company, Distil Networks, says that 48% of all internet traffic is bots. Ad fraud expert Dr. Augustine Fou estimates online ad fraud is vacuuming up over 50% of all online ad dollars in the US.

But it's not you who's getting screwed, it's the other guy! You have safeguards and metrics and reports and fraud protection in place, right?  Don't make me laugh. There's nothing crooks like better than a whole industry full of confident suckers.

This week the branding geniuses are at it again. The company that owns both Wrangler and Lee jeans is called VF Corp. VF has decided to spin both brands off into a new company which they are calling...ready?... Kontoor Brands. You see, we're supposed to get that "Kontoor" is a play on the word "contour." Get it?

Yeah, neither do I.

A PR hack for Mastercard said, “Our intention is to give people more control over their own digital identities, allowing them to easily manage and share their information their way with the devices they use every day.” Bullshit squared.

Fast Company says, "Mastercard and Microsoft have a frightening plan... (their plan) described every action an adult human takes that is both highly intimate and requires sharing personal and confidential details..."

Every time some company tells you they're using your data to "give you more control" or "help you manage" or make something "more relevant" it means just one thing -- they're extracting personal private information about you that they can sell to someone else.
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A "shocking" report in the Daily Mail (UK) found that...

• The due dates of pregnant women are being sold by a supermarket chain to third-parties for marketing purposes.

• Google is using the voices of children recorded on the YouTube Kids app to promote other Google apps.

• PayPal is sharing passport photos with Microsoft.

The "shocking" thing is that anyone is shocked anymore by this garbage.
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This week a data breach at Quora has resulted in the hijacking of names, email addresses, and encrypted passwords of over 100 million people. The incompetence and irresponsibility of the online industry in protecting private confidential information is so pathetically abysmal that horrifying news like this doesn't even create a ripple anymore.

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