Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Wednesday, February 7th, 2024 – 12:35 am Last week, the Connecticut Attorney General published a privacy enforcement update that made my stomach turn. A consumer had sent a complaint to the AG’s office because they received an advertisement in the mail for cremation services after recently completing chemotherapy. Apparently, the individual had been part of a…
The Messenger, a news website that pledged to shake up the media industry with a playbook borrowed from the doomed publishing start-ups of yesteryear, will be closing down. In an email to staff, the site’s founder, Jimmy Finkelstein, said that The Messenger’s shutdown was “effective immediately.” “This is truly the last thing I wanted, and…
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…
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…
A test by Walgreens of technology that replaced some cooler doors with digital screens that play ads has ended in acrimony. The digital screens’ vendor, Cooler Screens, is suing the pharmacy chain, saying that Walgreens obstructed an agreed-upon nationwide rollout of the internet-connected doors and demanded their removal from stores, according to court documents….
One of the top takeaways from this year’s Digiday Publishing Summit in Key Biscayne, Fla. was that while ad revenue is starting to flow back into the market, advertisers are asking for more proof that they’re going to get a return on their investment from their publisher partners. Between the on stage sessions and the…