NEWSLETTER #95/ December 17, 2017
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YEAR IN REVIEW
In January, we said that 2017 would be the year "..it all hits the fan" for the ad industry. Let's have a look back and see if that prediction held up.
In February, we reported that "the world's largest advertiser, Procter & Gamble, told the corrupt, fraud-ridden online media industry, and its feckless lapdogs in the agency business, that it had had enough and it wasn't gonna take it any more."
At the annual "leadership" meeting (I use the quotes advisedly) of the Inactive (oops, sorry) Interactive Advertising Bureau, Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer for P&G, told the assembled squids, slugs, and tap dancers that unless they cleaned up their act and adhered to some specific guidelines he laid down they weren't going to get any more P&G money. The great Mark Ritson called it "the biggest marketing speech for 20 years."
Later that month, the issue of brand safety raised its ugly head..."In what should have been a surprise to absolutely no one, The Times of London ran a big front page story about how major advertisers are contributing to terrorists, racists and pornographers by inadvertently advertising on their websites."
In March we reported on how the ad industry had become one of the key enablers of fake news.
In April, the always reliable Pepsi people gave us all a good laugh with what might have been the worst spot of all time. And the best part was that it was the handiwork of their loudmouth president who had not long before said it was “absolutely baffling” that the large advertising holding companies are not “buying up all of these incredible content” producers.
So he went ahead with great fanfare and created his own "content" playpen which he modestly named "Creators League Studio." He billed himself as the head of this studio. His "studio" created this monstrosity.
In May, Samsung kept the laughs coming as they told us about their Galaxy 8 smartphone with iris recognition for bulletproof security. "The patterns in your irises are unique to you and are virtually impossible to replicate..." said Samsung. Immediately a group of hackers broke into a Galaxy 8 in a few hours using a camera, a printer, and a contact lens.
In June, two new ad frauds called Judy and Fireball were discovered. Dr. Augustine Fou, an online fraud expert called them "fraud on such a massive scale it is beyond belief." According to Dr. Fou, Fireball was capable of producing 30 billion fraudulent ad impressions a minute.
Also in June came the 100% predictable news that the imbeciles at Dos Equis had fired their ad agency. This came after they had also fired "The Most Interesting Man In The World" and hired a new, younger one who was supposed to be more "engaging" to millennials. This idiocy was dead on arrival and bombed in a heartbeat. Dumb marketers can't help but improve things to death.
A turning point came for the GooBook duopoly in July when the EU fined Google $2.7 billion. "Google suffered a major blow ...after European antitrust officials fined the search giant a record $2.7 billion for unfairly favoring some of its own services over those of rivals." said The New York Times.
This started a round of increased scrutiny for the doo-wops which eventually led to the revelations about their role in the Russian election-tampering scheme.
Procter & Gamble was back in our newsletter in August when they announced that they had cut between $100 and 140 million in online advertising from their previous quarter's spending and seen no negative impact. In fact, their sales grew 2%. The Wall Street Journal said the cuts ..."had little impact on its business, proving that those digital ads were largely ineffective."
We all had a nice laugh in September when Facebook's non-stop bullshit machine claimed that Facebook reaches 41 million Americans between the ages of 18-24. Sadly for Facebook, there are only 31 million of them alive. It was later discovered that Facebook had made similar false claims about their reach all over the world.
In October, my new book went to #2 on the Amazon advertising best-seller charts. Hey, you didn't think I was going to go through the whole year without a plug did you?
Also in October, JP Morgan Chase said that ad fraud would grow to 16.4 billion in 2017, contradicting the IAB's dubious claim that ad fraud would drop by 10% this year from 7.2 billion to 6.5 billion.
The meltdown of the online publishing industry was a topic of one of our newsletters in November. But even we couldn't have anticipated the damage that GooBook duopoly was doing to online publishing. A few weeks later it was reported that the doo-wops will capture 84% of online ad revenue this year and account for 186% of digital ad growth.
In December I'm trying to forget all the stupidity of the past year and focus on a better 2018. But not too much better because if the silliness ever stops I'll be out of business.
Also a big thank you to the people in Canada, the UK, Norway, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, France, the Czech Republic, Australia, and even the US who invited me to speak this year.
Predictions For Next Year
More of the same, only worse.
Be safe and I'll see you in January.
