Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
It’s debate night in America, and darkness has fallen in Atlantic City. The area where Pacific and Virginia Avenues meet — once a bustling intersection swarming with patrons ready to take on the house — is now empty, even eerie. To the west, a seniors home and a jewelry shop with a neon-lit “cash for gold” sign face…
We have all heard of ad fraud. And we all probably also know that showing ads to bots — non-human visitors — is a waste of money. But what is less well is how ad fraud can wreak havoc on analytics and measurement — to the point that what you see in analytics is not…
Technology Zenefits, a Rocket That Fell to Earth, Tries to Launch Again close byline-meta close extended-byline close story-meta-footer close story-meta Photo Credit Doug Chayka Trying to turn around a failing technology company is almost always a futile task — just ask Marissa Mayer at Yahoo or whoever it is who now runs BlackBerry. But the…
Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Two of Google’s ad measurement metrics have been suspended from accreditation from the Media Rating Council (MRC) — a key accreditation service advertisers and publishers use to verify that their ads are being properly measured — over “non-compliance” issues related to the way in which it counts its ad impressions. MRC announced…
Hamish Nicklin In worst case scenarios, for every pound an advertiser spends programmatically on the Guardian only 30 pence actually goes to the publisher. The revelation, announced by the Guardian’s new chief revenue officer, Hamish Nicklin, at the Automated Trading Debate on Tuesday (4 Oct), means a host of adtech businesses operating within the supply…
FCC proposals stun advertising trade organizations with broadening definition of ‘sensitive data’ The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has unveiled a privacy plan that threatens to disrupt the current way consumers and advertisers reach each other, with increasing concern on behalf of the ANA, 4A’s and other trade groups on the definition of ‘sensitive data.’ Federal…
(Kacper Pempel/Reuters) A powerful surveillance program that police used for tracking racially charged protests in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., relied on special feeds of user data provided by Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, according to an ACLU blog post published Tuesday. The companies reportedly provided the data — often including the locations of users — to…
Back in December, I wrote this article(which got over 44,000 views), which showed some insights about the Donald Trump Facebook audience that can be extracted from Facebook’sAudience Insights tool by anyone with a Facebook ad account. I decided to quickly compare what has changed in the data. There are plenty of other things you can extract, and I…
Cover Photo Credit Doug Chayka Technology MailChimp and the Un-Silicon Valley Way to Make It as a Start-Up No venture capital, no Bay Area presence, no crazy burn rate: MailChimp’s founders built the company slowly by anticipating customers’ needs and following their instincts. close byline-meta close extended-byline close story-meta-footer close story-meta ATLANTA — The typical…
What Did Tic Tacs Do to Deserve Donald Trump?! A splash page on Tic Tac’s website, Friday, Oct. 7, 2016. Credit: tictacusa.com First Donald Trump Jr. had to go and compare refugees to Skittles, and now it turns out his dad totally misuses Tic Tacs. Per The Washington Post’s bombshell report today about a conversation…