Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Programmatic auctions are creating so many carbon copies of themselves, it’s threatening to topple the entire structure of programmatic. The bid duplication is getting so extreme, buyers are starting to take notice of this strange behavior. Instead of seeing the whole universe of bid opportunities, demand-side platforms see only a small portion of inventory copied…
A new report published on November 28th, based on data from Adalytics (an ‘Ad quality and transparency platform’), reveals a number of potential transparency and brand safety concerns with regards to Google Search advertising, and in particular, Google Search Partner network. WFA is in dialogue with Adalytics and Google, and many other partners, to further…
A study from Adalytics Research explores the intricacies of Google’s Search Partner (GSP) network and asks marketers, “Does a lack of transparency create brand safety concerns for search advertisers?” The report suggests marketers booking ads via GSP — a network of thousands of sites that use its content-discovery and monetization tools — run the risk of their…
Update (11/16/23): IBM released a statement to the Financial Times saying that it has “suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation.” Media Matters will update if the other major companies in this report take any similar actions. Update (11/17/23): Axios reported that “Apple is pausing all advertising on X, the Elon Musk-owned…
A year ago Elon Musk took over Twitter. Too much has happened in the 365 days that followed to even begin to chronicle it all here, but the short version is that he quickly fired 80% of the staff, broke a bunch of things, paid racists, misogynists, and homophobes to set up shop, picked (sometimes…
Last week, Walmart made headlines with a claim that new weight loss drugs might be making people buy less food. Walmart US CEO John Furner told Bloomberg that people taking Wegovy, Ozempic, and similar drugs showed a “slight change” in their purchasing habits: “just less units, slightly less calories.” How does Walmart know this? Because,…
“Anonymised” data lies at the core of everything from modern medical research to personalised recommendations and modern AI techniques. Unfortunately, according to a paper, successfully anonymising data is practically impossible for any complex dataset. An anonymised dataset is supposed to have had all personally identifiable information removed from it, while retaining a core of useful…
Credit…Illustration by Derek Brahney May 9, 2017 Recently I handed over the keys to my email account to a service that promised to turn my spam-bloated inbox into a sparkling model of efficiency in just a few clicks. Unroll.me’s method of instant unsubscribing from newsletters and junk mail was “trusted by millions of happy users,”…
Americans at the lower end of the economic ladder suffer from an ever-growing privacy divide, impacting more than just their personal dignity and autonomy. In 1969, a woman named Barbara James walked into a neighborhood legal services office in New York City in search of help to fight the city’s home visit policy. Her case…
Ad fraud will cost marketers $84 billion this year – 22% of all online ad spend. This figure is expected to soar to $170 billion in five years’ time in 2028, according to a new in-depth study from Juniper Research. Why we care. Ad fraud could be costing your brand money, hurting campaign results, leaving…