NEWSLETTER #79/ AUGUST 20, 2017
No Images? Click here
GOOGLE PROVES YOU'RE A LIAR
I'm reading a fascinating new book that has serious implications for everyone in the marketing and advertising business. I'm only half done with the book, but I recommend it anyway.
The book is called "Everybody Lies." One of the premises of the book is that we cannot trust anything people tell us about their behavior and that a much more reliable indicator of what people actually do and believe is what they search for on Google.
While the premise may seem dodgy on the surface, the author, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, an economist with Harvard, NY Times, and Google credentials, makes a pretty convincing case that the anonymity of online searches tells us a lot more about what people are actually doing than asking them.
For years I have been railing against the idiocy of believing "self-reported nonsense" (e.g., here, here, here, & here )
This occurs when marketers or researchers ask people what they are doing or what they believe and accept this bullshit as some form of reliable "research."
Why do people lie to researchers? According to Stephens-Davidowitz there are a number of reasons. But one of the strongest is something that should be obvious to anyone who calls himself/herself a marketer -- what incentive do they have to tell the truth? The answer is, none.
IAB Goes Internationally Stupid
The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau in the US, Internet Advertising Bureau in the UK) is a trade organization formed to preserve and protect the online advertising industry.
Apparently last week they launched a stupidity offensive with two appalling pieces of horseshit from two different IAB entities.
First, in the UK, the head of the IAB wrote this transparently defensive nonsense about how the recent unnerving P&G revelations were really no big deal. "Digital is growing, adapting and improving, just as it should..." This is complete hot air. According to Salesforce, in the U.S. Google and Facebook accounted for 103% of online advertising growth in the first half of last year. In other words, absent the Goobook duopoly, online advertising declined 3%.
Also, according to Dr. Augustine Fou, despite the baloney we read from the online media and marketing lobby, online ad fraud is more pervasive than ever, and is growing.
The truth is, online advertising is finally getting the scrutiny it has avoided for 20 years and nobody with a brain is swallowing the crap they've been peddling.
Then we have this astounding piece of scare-mongering drivel entitled "European Regulators Are About To Kill The Digital Media Industry" from the head of the IAB in the US. His absurd premise: because of new European privacy rules that say publishers can't block people who block ads, the corrupt, irresponsible online media industry is going to evaporate. Yeah, any minute. (But, think about it. Wouldn't it be amazingly wonderful if he was right?)
This baloney, by the way, will be put to rest (warning: self-serving shit storm on the way) in my new book, just about two weeks away.
