#335/March 23, 2025
Let’s pretend for a minute that marketers know what they're doing.
And let’s also pretend that ‘precision targeting’ in media is a really good idea.
And let’s also pretend that the marketers who are pissing their company’s money away on precision targeted programmatic advertising are awesome.
Let’s see what these geniuses are getting for the extra money (sometimes 2 to 3 times the cost of 'non-precision' targeting) they’re paying for all this ‘precision.’
Adlook, a digital media company, recently did a study. They took specific target segments from popular data providers, and asked people within those segments about themselves. Then they compared what the data said about these people to what the people themselves said.
Here’s a summary of the highlights:
- 47% of the people who the data said were women, were men
- 50% of the people who the data said were men, were women
- 67% of the people that the data said were parents said they had no children
- 52% of the people who were supposed to be 18-34 said they were over 35
- 60% of the people who were supposed to be over 45 said they were under 45
- 76% of the people who were supposed to be married said they weren’t
If my dog Roscoe flipped a coin he would be way more accurate than this 'precision data' horseshit. In the understatement of the year, Adlook said, “This suggests that socio-demographics targeting may not provide added value.” No shit.
What Does The Above Study Prove?
Who the hell knows?
On the surface it is incredibly damning (and to me, pretty damn funny.) Probably it is correct and the targeting data we pay for is way worse than useless.
But maybe the study isn’t reliable. After all, it was done online. And if there’s one thing we know about data gathered online it is that it is very wise to assume it’s complete bullshit. In other words, the data harvested from this study may be nonsense Just like the data it reported on.
Nonetheless here are some non-data-driven points to consider about media targeting:
⁃ You are not as smart as you think you are. You think you know where your customers are going to come from, but you don’t. Customers very often come from unexpected places.
⁃ The whole idea of precision targeting is highly suspect. The most useful effect of advertising is to reach as many people as you can afford to reach. The concept of “precision targeted advertising” is a contrivance dreamed up by the online advertising industry to make cheap, tiny-reach, no-impact advertising sound providential.
⁃ Precision targeting is anything but. Most of the data you are paying extravagantly for is alarmingly unreliable. And the reports you are getting are substantially bullshit.
There's No Business Like Fraud Business
As everyone in advertising and marketing knows (but no one in authority is willing to stand up and say out loud) the programmatic advertising ecosystem is largely a fraud factory.
But there was one company that set out to change all that. In 2022, Kubient, an adtech company, published "How to create a world free of fraud." Then in 2024, Kubient declared that it was 'committed to solving the growing problem of ad fraud.' Bravo!
Kubient's ceo asserted that Kubient had AI that was "identifying and preventing approximately 300% more digital ad fraud." Kubient raised more than $33 million from investors in its first and second rounds.
But Kubient had a problem. It was planning on an IPO but was not showing a whole lot of sales growth. So they entered into an agreement with another company: We'll bill you for a lot of money, and you bill us for about the same amount of money and no real money will actually change hands, but we'll both be able to show nice sales increases.
Last week Kubient's ceo was sentenced to a year and a day in prison. For fraud.
h/t the great Jay Tannenbaum
Trusting the Wrong Things
Have you ever heard someone say, “I don’t trust focus groups?”
Or, “I don’t trust ad agencies?”
Or, “I don’t trust the reports I'm getting?”
I know I’ve made a handsome career out of not trusting the opinions of experts.
The other day I was reading something about AI and my knee-jerk reaction was typical — “I don’t believe that for a second.” Until I saw who wrote it. And in a snap my reaction changed from, “I don’t believe that” to “wow, that’s interesting.”
It turned out the writer was someone whose writing and opinions I have admired and trusted for years.
The point here is that I realized that my “trust reservoir” does not reside with organizations or institutions. It resides with individuals.
There are some people you can trust and some you can’t. Your likelihood of trusting someone’s observations, opinions, or recommendations is usually directly related to your experience of having observed that person over time and recognized whether that person’s thinking is sound and trustworthy.
Focus groups, ad agencies, and reports may or may not be trustworthy. It has nothing to do with the function. It has all to do with the people performing the function. No one is right all the time. But some people have a much higher quotient of success than other people, institutions, or organizations.
When you have to make a difficult decision, the best strategy is not to put your trust in an institution. Put your trust in an outstanding person.
Institutions are usually wrong. Outstanding people are only sometimes wrong.
Facebook Loses Big
And speaking of outstanding people, meet Tanya O'Carroll. I've had the pleasure of knowing her for a few years, and working a little with her through our common interest in exposing the horrendous practices of the criminal online surveillance cabal.
This week Tanya won a very important lawsuit against Meta in the UK that I believe has the potential to have massive repercussions.
Tanya sued Meta claiming they had violated UK data laws. Tanya asserted that Facebook collected and processed data about her, and sent her targeted advertising based on tracking her, despite her demanding that they stop doing it, as was her right under UK data regulations. She won in court.
Although this is just a victory for one woman, it is huge because it sets a precedent for millions in the UK who can now demand that Facebook and its parent company stop spying on them.
Kudos to Tanya. And FU to Facebook.
And, by the way, UK governing bodies charged with enforcing data protection regulations should have long ago demanded that Facebook stop this crap. They didn't. But Tanya did.
Like someone once said, you can't trust institutions. Put your trust in outstanding people.
Miracle Cure for Insomnia
If you have trouble sleeping, here's a surefire remedy -- listen to me shoot my mouth off. This week you can tune in to "Genius Scouts" (apparently, I'm a genius) and hear me whine about the sorry state of the ad industry.
It's hosted by Justin Oberman. And we conclude that if only people would listen to us geniuses the ad industry would be perfect.
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