NEWSLETTER #121 / JULY 15, 2018
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MARKETERS BLUFF, MEDIA GIGGLE
Continuing their embarrassing game of "wait till your father gets home," the marketing industry once again this week made laughable, empty threats against the corrupt, fraud-ridden online media industry and their jolly good friends in the holding companies. But this time they really mean it! Yeah, right.
For over ten years bewildered brands have been screwed blind to the tune of tens of billions of dollars by online traffic fraud, click fraud, corruption and kickbacks, non-"viewable" ads, absence of transparency, and ludicrous, unverifiable "metrics."
In 2016, after finally realizing how deeply and vigorously they were being penetrated, they started issuing warnings and threats that weren't worth the pixels they were printed on... or displayed on...or whatever the hell you do with a pixel.
This week, the marketing industry issued more toothless hokum. According to a story in Marketing Week entitled, "Brands Could Switch Spend Back To Traditional Channels If Digital Doesn’t Clean Up Its Act," Deutsche Telekom’s head of international media management had this to say...
“[Tolerance] is not just decreasing in media, where people are getting more and more frustrated, but it’s reaching the top [board level]. This digital bubble is about to burst or has burst... if you guys don’t sort it out, guess what? We’re going back to TV..."
Yeah, wake me when that happens. If they're trying to scare Google and Facebook, cue the laugh track. Do these marketing blowhards know who they're dealing with? Facebook or Google could buy Deutsche Telekom with pocket change and sell it for scrap metal. These guys have been so full of feeble ultimatums for so long they couldn't scare a neurotic bunny rabbit.
Not to be outdone, the ANA this week issued an "updated media agency contract template" which will once and for all time define exactly what brands are paying for and what they are getting from agencies. That is, until next year when it is once again discovered that marketers don't know which way their ass is pointing.
It's important to note that this "updated media agency contract template" was developed without an ounce of input or consultation from their "partners" in the 4As. You don't need an interpreter to understand that language.
Meanwhile, online fraud is out of control. If the ad industry's "leadership" hadn't been asleep at the wheel all these years they might have done something about it. But now that organized crime and state-sponsored cyber-hoodlums are involved, fuhgetaboutit.
Ad blocking is becoming ubiquitous. Doc Searls calculates that over 1.5 billion devices are now armed with ad blockers. Consumers are disgusted with online data abuse and privacy abuse. And what are the industry trade organizations doing about all this? Sending out really, really tough press releases.
I only wish there was a better word than clueless.
BotRot
And speaking of dopey marketers getting fleeced, The Washington Post reported last week that over the previous two months Twitter had eliminated 70 million "suspicious" accounts. That's over a million a day.
The good news is that no matter how creepy you are, Twitter, you can't touch Facebook. In the first 3 months of 2018 they deleted 583 million fake accounts. That's more fake accounts than there are human beings in North America. No, you cannot make this shit up.
Just one question for Twitter and Facebook: those cutting-edge, super-sophisticated, data-driven, digital-savvy marketers who thought they were advertising to people -- not bots -- they're gonna get their money back, right? Yeah, right.
Lawyers Have All The Fun
Next we cut to the ongoing soap opera between Sir Martin Sorrell and the lovelies at WPP who unceremoniously dumped his ass, reportedly for paying a hooker with his company credit card (c'mon guys, who carries around that kind of cash anymore?)
Apparently WPP still owes Sorrell $20 million. Over the past few weeks, The Martinizer's new company (S4 Capital) and WPP have been at each other's throats over a Netherlands media company called MediaMonks. Sir Marty won the prize and WPP is threatening to withhold the 20 mil it owes him, claiming he violated an agreement.
Although it's chump change to him, Sir Marty doesn't seem like the kind of bloke who's gonna let some corporate ambulance chasers screw him out of 20 mil. I'm hoping for a nice juicy legal shit fight, but my hunch is WPP will cave and pay him his 20.
As We Join Hands And Watch Democracy Evaporate
In case you don't believe that adtech, online tracking, and surveillance marketing present an existential threat to democracies, I suggest you read this article about China from the NYTimes. Here's the gist:
"China is reversing the commonly held vision of technology as a great democratizer, bringing people more freedom and connecting them to the world. In China, it has brought control."
Or as a dumbass blogger wrote 9 years ago...
"Tyrants don't get to power by being stupid. They're watching and learning....technology isn't only effective at spreading information. It's also pretty good at suppressing it."
Or 4 years ago:
"As for the mythical democratizing effect of the web...You have to do some truly monumental logic torturing to come up with a story in which all this consolidation and concentration of economic, marketing, and communication power leaves the consumer in charge. ...The bullshit about 'the consumer being in charge' is just the blind utopian rubbish of clueless digital nitwits."
Governments that know everything about us are dangerous. What reason do we have to believe that marketers aren't? Adtech must be stopped. Read BadMen.
Mouthing Off
I'll be speaking Tuesday in San Francisco. The promo piece says..."Get ready to have your most closely held beliefs about marketing challenged as 'The Ad Contrarian' and best-selling author Bob Hoffman explains how marketers and advertisers have lost touch with consumers..." Yikes. I better come up with something good, quick.
And a happy 100th birthday to my dad somewhere.
