Category Archives: Media

Justifying the Weird

Posted on Thursday, 7 December 2017 8:30 am by markpilip

What’s the success rate for people trying to evade marketing surveillance on the web? I think it’s zero. Check out the story of Ross William Ulbricht AKA “Dread Pirate Roberts” of Silk Road infamy. He was alleged to be responsible … Continue reading →

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Déjà Vu: The Partner Curse

Posted on Thursday, 30 November 2017 9:13 am by markpilip

I’m sure you’ve read about Hyphbot, but if you haven’t, here’s a good piece at The Drum which you should read. In the article, this line from Jay Stevens, the Adform CRO, hit me: “Premium publishers, like the FT are … Continue reading →

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Your Holiday Season Mission: Customer Acquisition

Posted on Wednesday, 29 November 2017 10:17 am by markpilip

We’re in peak marketing season, with under 30 days to go. Digital CPMs are rising, clearing spots at acceptable CPA is getting harder, email in-boxes are more cluttered than ever, and sales promotion is off the hook. Nothing we haven’t … Continue reading →

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Another Day, More Digital Fraud

Posted on Wednesday, 22 November 2017 9:20 am by markpilip

How many of your ad tech and mar tech technology providers called you in September and October and said “Hey, we’re seeing some odd things happening and we think maybe there’s some new fraud taking place. Maybe you should cut … Continue reading →

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Black Friday Narrative: The Retail Apocalypse (The Data Says…)

Posted on Tuesday, 21 November 2017 9:41 am by markpilip

I was searching Linkedin last evening and read a comment from somebody about how “Black Friday sales have been down the last few years.” The comment came with no facts to back the assertion, and it fit neatly into the … Continue reading →

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GroupM Shines Light on Middlemen

Posted on Wednesday, 15 November 2017 8:05 am by markpilip

Bravo to Group M for starting to shine the light on the adtech middlemen who reduce our working media to, at times, a pittance. Advertisers need to demand more of this behavior from our agencies. Here’s the report I want … Continue reading →

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Paywalled, but interesting article at New York Times today on Renee DiResta’s work on peer-to-peer disinformation and how social media can be gamed to lead one into an echo chamber where vaccines can cause autism, planes distribute chemicals via chemtrails, … Continue reading →

Posted on Monday, 13 November 2017 1:30 pm by markpilip | Comments Off on Peer-to-Peer Disinformation

Looks like some of the shady players in adtech (a large group from which to choose) are resorting to social engineering to get around ads.txt. What should you add to ads.txt? Nothing. By the way, I think an ads.txt file … Continue reading →

Posted on Thursday, 2 November 2017 9:12 am by markpilip | Comments Off on Adtech Social Engineering

ABD (Always Be De-Averaging), ads.txt Edition

Posted on Wednesday, 1 November 2017 9:04 am by markpilip

Now that ads.txt is getting traction, with about 44% (and growing) of the top 10,000 domains using it, you’ve got some homework in your future. Here’s the assignment: Pull together your campaign data at the source (e.g. somedomain.com) and “source/source” … Continue reading →

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Where’s the Bottom of the Barrel?

Posted on Tuesday, 31 October 2017 9:09 am by markpilip

This quote from an un-named programmatic specialist at a media company is telling: If you want our $1 to $2 inventory that’s on the open exchange, we’re glad you are interested in it, but you aren’t going to get much … Continue reading →

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