#287/ May 22, 2022

THE YEAR ADTECH SELF-DESTRUCTS

The adtech industry has done a great job of fooling most of the people most of the time. But like the man said, you can't fool all the people all the time. The walls are starting to come down around them.

In February the data protection authorities of the European Union ruled that the "consent pop-ups" -- those idiotic notices that ask you incomprehensible questions about allowing cookies -- are illegal. The adtech industry's rationale behind these consent pop-ups is some nonsense called the Transparency & Consent Framework, or TCF.

Based on the findings of the data protection authorities in the TCF case, there is no way in the world that Real-Time Bidding (RTB) -- the technology that underpins the entire programmatic ad system -- is legal.

This week the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) lead by the great Dr. Johnny Ryan, got their hands on, and published, confidential information about the size of the RTB industry's atrocities. It will blow your mind.

     • RTB tracks and broadcasts ('broadcast' is the term used when an RTB entity transmits information obtained by tracking all over the web) peoples' online behavior and location 294 billion times a day in the US and 197 billion times a day in Europe.

     • The average person in the US (that means you) has his/her online activity and location broadcast to thousands of companies 747 times every day. In Europe RTB transmits an average person's data 376 times a day.

     • Both US citizens and European citizens have their private activities shared with thousands of organizations across the globe including organizations in Russia and China. There is absolutely no control of what happens to this information once it is broadcast to these organizations.

     • According to the ICCL, "Google, the biggest player in the RTB system, allows 4,698 companies to receive RTB data about people in the U.S., while Microsoft...may send data to 1,647 companies."

     • The figures presented above are all very low estimates. They do not include RTB broadcasts by Facebook or Amazon.

     • All of these numbers may be just the tip of the iceberg and do not include organizations such as data brokers who can intercept all this info as it is broadcast across the web and re-use it or re-sell it.

By light years this is the largest data breach in history. Even the timid, pathetic enforcement arm of the European Union - who despite GDPR have allowed the adtech industry to get away with murder for years -- can't continue to ignore this.

I predict that sometime in the next 12 months European regulators will announce that the entire RTB structure is inconsistent with the GDPR and is illegal. It is impossible to predict how this will affect regulators here in the US where the enforcement of any consumer privacy regulations is non-existent.

Nonetheless, this will be the beginning of the end for the surveillance-based programmatic ad industry.

Well, as I've been saying here for years, advertisers don't know what they're getting for their money. They're idiots. That's the beauty of the adtech con. And the most successful businessman in the world doesn't know this? Pull the other one.

Musk is a pretty lousy liar. Just about every commentator in the world is saying that all this fuss is just a ploy by Musk to get Twitter to lower its selling price. But it led me to ask myself a question. Who are the world's worst liars? So here is my personal  list of the world's five worst liars:

You know the whole brand purpose fad has reached the point of absurdity when...
   ...Knorr bullion cubes become advocates for dietary diversity
   ...Ice cream brand Magnum explored positioning themselves as champions of "self-expression"
   ... To “inspire girls to dream of a future full of possibility” is the purpose of a shampoo -- Sunsilk.

Apparently investors aren't taking kindly to all this self-righteous horseshit. Jope is facing major criticism from investors who don't have their heads stuck up their virtuous asses.

Unilever has made a classic mistake. They had a huge hit with the Dove "real beauty" campaign. They attributed that success to "brand purpose" instead of the real driver of its success -- terrific advertising.

Now they think they have a formula for success. They'll find out soon enough how wrong they are.                                                                                h/t Roger Lewis

1. They have all been advertising spokespeople for cryptocurrency companies.
2. As cryptocurrencies have collapsed they've all disappeared from sight. None of them has been available to the press for comments, according to the NY Times.

The only person associated with celebrity crypto advertising willing to speak was Jeff Schaffer, director of Larry David's "Don't Be Like Larry" Super Bowl spot. Schaffer was refreshingly honest, “Unfortunately I don’t think we’d have anything to add as we have no idea how cryptocurrency works (even after having it explained to us repeatedly), don’t own it, and don’t follow its market,” he said. “We just set out to make a funny commercial!”

According to Rolling Stone, Trump has been asking friends, "Is Google trying to f*ck me?" because it doesn't have the Truth Social app in its Play Store.

Just one problem. Apparently Truth Social doesn't have a functioning Android app, and if it does, it hasn't submitted it to the Play Store.