Category Archives: fraud

2.8 billion years of evolution, down the drain

Posted on Tuesday, 23 October 2018 8:40 am by

Someday, as expressed in this article by Shelly Palmer, AI and technology will be so good it will be impossible to tell truth from fakes. In other words, we won’t be able to trust our eyes and ears any more. … Continue reading →

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Your Facebook Rebate

Posted on Monday, 16 July 2018 10:27 am by

Q2 2018 is in the books. Plenty of time for advertisers and their agencies to true up Q1 and really start work on the second half of the year. As a reminder, in Q1 Facebook removed: 583MM fake accounts. 21MM … Continue reading →

Posted in digital marketing, fraud, Social Media Marketing | Tagged , , , , ,

Attacking You With Retargeting

Posted on Wednesday, 21 March 2018 9:06 am by

WebKit recently updated WebKit to address “An attacker seeking to track site visitors can take advantage of the user’s HSTS cache to store one bit of information on that user’s device.” in an interesting and understandable technical blog post by … Continue reading →

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Who’s Viewing Your Ads? Maybe Your IoT Security Camera.

Another day, another case of IoT security lapses. When buying digital media, you should always ask “how many humans are viewing my ads, and how can you prove it to me?” This article from Threatpost describes the extreme lack of … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on Tuesday, 13 March 2018 1:57 pm by | Tagged ,

Media Whitewash

Posted on Wednesday, 21 February 2018 8:29 am by

The ever thought-provoking Don Marti wrote something in “This is why we can’t have nice brands” on February 17th that reminded me of a standard direct mail practice: “Twitter has a solution that keeps its ads saleable: just don’t show … Continue reading →

Posted in Branding, digital marketing, Direct Response, fraud, Media, Social Media Marketing, Strategy | Tagged , ,

Unilever Drains the Digital Swamp?

Posted on Monday, 12 February 2018 8:40 am by

Unilever’s Keith Weed will speak at the IAB today. He’ll talk about his frustration with the lack of the “3 Vs” (viewability, verification, value) in social media platforms. But he’s really looking to have his Marc Pritchard moment by threatening … Continue reading →

Posted in Branding, digital marketing, fraud, Leadership, Social Media Marketing | Tagged , , , , ,

The Root of Digital Advertising B.S.

Posted on Thursday, 25 January 2018 9:41 am by

For years, Bob Hoffman has been writing about the delusion held by advertisers that people want to interact with us or our ads. I was an early adopter of that now-disproven fantasy. I bought in back in ’89-’90 when I … Continue reading →

Posted in Analysis, Data, digital marketing, fraud, Marketing, Tactics | Tagged , , ,

Digital Marketing Tips From El Al

Posted on Wednesday, 24 January 2018 8:57 am by

El Al airlines has never been bombed and only hijacked once. This in spite of being a constant target for well-funded and persistent criminals. An enviable track record. How do they do it? Isaac Yeffet, El Al’s former head of … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, digital marketing, fraud, Media, Philosophy, planning, Security, Strategy | Tagged , , , , , , ,

Zirconium: The Holdco You’ve Never Heard Of

Posted on Tuesday, 23 January 2018 5:30 pm by

The slippery nature of online advertising gets better (or worse) all the time. The latest comes from Confiant’s CTO, Jerome Dangu. Turns out there’s a fake agency holdco of sorts, with 28 fake ad agencies under the Zirconium umbrella. They were … Continue reading →

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Bet Your Ads Aren’t Loading

Posted on Tuesday, 23 January 2018 8:27 am by

Back in the early aughts, I remember getting worked up about losing around 5% of the impressions I paid for. In other words, I paid for 100 ads and could only see 95 in the server logs. The usual explanation … Continue reading →

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