VW REALLY, REALLY, REALLY SORRY. NO REALLY.
THIS TIME WE REALLY MEAN IT.

IT’S 1959. THE SETTING IS THE OFFICE OF BILL BERNBACH, CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF DOYLE DANE BERNBACH. ALSO PRESENT ARE HELMUT KRONE, JULIAN KOENIG, AND DEREK, A PLANNER. (FOR THE RECORD, IN 1959 MONKEYS HAD NOT YET EVOLVED INTO PLANNERS, BUT THIS IS A DUMBASS NEWSLETTER, SO SHUT UP.)

SUDDENLY A SHOT RINGS OUT. DEREK SLUMPS TO THE FLOOR, DEAD. BERNBACH WIPES HIS FINGERPRINTS FROM THE GUN AND THROWS IT OUT HIS WINDOW.

BERNBACH: Hey, Julian. Can you dump this schmuck at the track or something?

Okay, back to the real world...

Just when we were about to forget the rancid culture of Volkswagen and its criminal emissions scandal, Volkswagen launched a new campaign this week. The centerpiece of the campaign is a TV spot that intentionally and specifically reminds us of their disgraceful criminality. Why? 

“Without mentioning the past...we would never have the credibility or authenticity to move forward with the brand,” said VW's Senior VP of Marketing. It's "difficult to become a part of culture again if we are not reconnecting with our audience,” said the agency principal, "It's very much about clearing the air with our customer."

No, I'm not kidding.

As someone who's been around for a few hundred years, here's a little tip for the VW team. Enough with the apologies. From time to time we all experience the calamitous impulse to overshare our remorse. We hope it will create that fictional thing called "closure" and finally help us feel cleansed, and allow us to "move on." Sorry, fellas, life don't work that way.

Sometimes the best idea is to just shut up about your disgraceful past and change the fucking subject. Kinda like what the real Bernbach did the first time around.

Many people don't even realize that Google - the largest ad supported business in the history of the planet - even contains advertising. While 97% of people in the UK use Google for search, almost 50% don't know they carry advertising.

A study several months ago in the UK reported that 60% of 2,000 respondents said they don't know the difference between an ad and a search result in Google.

But Google has done the exact opposite. Last month they redesigned their mobile ads to look even more like search results. They have been continually redesigning their ads to look more and more like search results for years. See the evidence here. Search Engine Land says Google's new mobile ads "have never more reflected the look of organic listings."

Long Shadow of Deceit and Fraud

Google's duplicity is only a small part of the sleaze that taints the web. Online culture is awash with lies, deceit and distrust. This has not been lost on the public.

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center reported that Americans view fake news as a bigger threat to our society than terrorism, illegal immigration, racism, climate change, or violent crime.

Fake news is, in my opinion, a catch-all term that average people use to describe their lack of trust in anything they read and hear. It is not to be confused with the claim of "fake news" that rancid politicians use to deflect any criticism.

The disinformation that is being spread by these Russian propaganda mills is being unwittingly financed by major US advertisers like Liberty Mutual, Adobe, Wix, and Grammarly.

You can thank our lovely ad tech platforms for that, as ignorant advertisers often have no idea where their ad dollars are going on the web. You can also thank the sweethearts at Google whose greed and irresponsibility will not allow them to hire enough people to monitor their platforms.

Oh, yeah, I forgot. AI is doing that.

The story centers around a mother who found that a video of her 10-year-old daughter and friend playing in their backyard pool had run up 400,000 views.

You only have to read the comments of the YouTube executives to understand how absolutely irresponsible and full of shit these people are.

The clueless creeps at YouTube have been warned many times about what is going on, and are doing essentially nothing to stop it. Why? It could cost them ad revenue. Heck, they wouldn't want to change the fucking algorithm and risk losing some money.

And anyway, yeah, I forgot, AI is taking care of it.

First, Digiday reported this week that "most publishers don’t benefit from behavioral ad targeting." In fact, almost 70% of publishers say that behavioral targeting has either not helped or actually hurt their business. (For civilians, "behavioral targeting" is, as a general rule, the online advertising that "benefits" from tracking. More info here.)

Next, the claim that tracking and surveillance are essential for the health of the online ad industry was proven to be the horseshit we've always said it was. According to a report this week in the The Wall Street Journal...

"...in one of the first empirical studies of the impacts of behaviorally targeted advertising on online publishers’ revenue, researchers at the University of Minnesota, University of California, Irvine, and Carnegie Mellon University suggest publishers only get about 4% more revenue for an ad impression that has a cookie enabled than for one that doesn’t. The study tracked millions of ad transactions at a large U.S. media company over the course of one week.

That modest gain for publishers stands in contrast to the vastly larger sums advertisers are willing to pay for behaviorally targeted ads. A 2009 study by Howard Beales, a professor at George Washington University School of Business and a former director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission, found advertisers are willing to pay 2.68 times more for a behaviorally targeted ad than one that wasn’t."

So let's see...you pay 268% more and the publisher receives 4% more. That leaves 264%. Wonder where that goes...?

If you want to read more on this subject, try this.

Though not a big fan of "The Sound of Silence" (it's got  those preachy, wooden lyrics that don't age well) I'm a huge fan of Paul Simon's song writing. Give yourself a little treat today and listen to "Slip-Sliding Away" and "Still Crazy..." and don't miss the brief, heavenly sax solo by Michael Brecker.

For Bob's website go here. For info on having Bob speak, go here.
For all previous newsletters go here.  For Bob's blog go here.