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It wasn't long ago that naive digital utopians labeled the web the "information superhighway" and promoted it as the great democratizing medium that would give us all a voice. For a good laugh, here's a quote from Arianna Huffington from 2012... "Thanks to YouTube -- and blogging and instant fact-checking and viral emails -- it is getting harder and harder to get away with repeating brazen lies without paying a price..." Yeah, right . I'm just curious about what universe Ms. Huffington resides in. In fact, what was promised to be the "information superhighway" has turned out to be an autobahn of stupidity, pornography, narcissism, fraud, terror, bullying and disinformation. The only saving grace is blogs. Yes, that's a joke. For marketers, the digital fantasists promised a world in which online democratization would allow the smallest start-up to challenge the large corporate monsters. Sure, any minute now. In fact, we are currently liv...

One of the great paradoxes of our industry is that the people who are constantly haranguing us with the indispensable role of data are the most active group of data deniers. Every day there are conferences being staged, meetings being held, and presentations being made at which digital experts are standing up and intentionally misleading the attendees by glossing over or completely ignoring key data about online advertising. To wit... It takes 10,000 display ads to generate 6 clicks Over half of all display ads that are bought are unviewable Only 9% (at most) of display ads get even 1 second of attention 80% of people who are aware of ad blockers use them About 2/3 of millennials have ad blockers installed on their devices Ad fraud is out of control and no one knows the true level of ad fraud None of the reporting about online traffic or clicks is reliable These are some of the most critical data points about online advertising and they are almost never voluntarily disclosed by an...

In a story this morning, Campaign US is reporting that morale in the U.S. ad industry is dropping faster than panties on prom night. Here are some stats from the report: In 2015, the percent of people working in advertising who rated their morale as "low" or "dangerously low" was 34%. This year it has fallen to 47% This is a drop in morale of 36% in just one year 63% of the people with low morale said they are actively looking for a new job. By far the number one reason for low morale -- at 73% -- was "company leadership." Couple that with these facts...  Almost 60% of clients in a recent report said they were planning to do an agency search this year  The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) says that unscrupulous financial practices among agencies is "pervasive." Almost 3/4 of marketers say they are dissatisfied with the state of online advertising The only honest conclusion you can draw is that there is a depressing level of unhappines...

We know that fraud is a major problem for online advertisers. But we don't know how big a problem it is. Estimates range from 2% to 90% -- which is another way of saying we have no fucking idea. The ANA ( Association of National Advertisers ) estimates that ad fraud will cost marketers $7.2 billion this year. But this estimate is based on assumptions that are imprecise at best. If any of the assumptions baked into this estimate is incorrect or inaccurate, the number could go up or down dramatically. The $7.2 billion number represents about 5% of worldwide online ad spending. To give you an example of how fuzzy this number is, the WFA ( World Federation of Advertisers ) says that the actual amount of fraud could easily be 30% -- or six times this. Believe it or not, if fraud accounts for just 10% of the online advertising system, in 9 years ad fraud will be the second largest source of criminal activity in the world , second only to drug trafficking. And ad fraud carries with it al...

I believe that long after I’ve left the advertising world for a better one, people will look back and say that the era of online advertising could be divided into 3 stages. Stage 1: "Fools Rush In" This is the stage we’ve been in for the past 10 years. Tens of billions of dollars have been flushed down the digi-drain by marginal marketing meatheads trying desperately not to fall behind the stampeding herd in the pursuit of up-to-the-minuteness. Egged on by bumbling amateurs … oops, sorry…online experts, they have thrown every dollar they could find at the mythical “brand advocate” who was sitting at home exhausted after her Herculean “customer journey” just waiting to express her “brand love” to cyberworld once she received the bat signal in the form of a Twitter post. It would be wonderful if this stage could continue forever because it's been a lot of laughs. But I’m afraid it’s had its day. Stage 2: "Wait A Minute" A US Senator named Everett Dirksen once said...

As we've all been told a thousand times by marketing and media geniuses, television is dead. Here are a few examples: Business Insider: " The Death Of TV As We've Known It Is Finally Here " Forbes: " Why Television Is Dead " Politico: " TV Is Dead. Now What? " Tragically, here at the Ketel One Conference Center overlooking the campus of The Ad Contrarian world headquarters, we've been a little negligent recently in chronicling the death of television. So today we're going to do a little catching up.


 Nielsen just released its Total Audience Report for the second quarter of 2016, so let's have a look at how the dead are doing:     •    On average, adults 18+ spent 4 hours and 9 minutes a day watching live television. 
     •    This is over 4 times as much time as they spent online on a laptop or desktop 
     •    It is over twice as much time as they spent connected on a smartphone
  ...

Data beget facts. Facts beget principles. Without facts and principles, data is useless. After years of studying planetary motions, and compiling data, Copernicus uncovered a fact. The fact was that the Earth revolved around the sun. Until then, the data made no sense. After years of studying the facts of bodies in motion, Isaac Newton developed a principle -- all bodies with mass seem to attract each other (we call it gravitation.) Until then, the facts were confusing. Right now, the online advertising industry is drowning in data, but has generated almost no useful facts or principles. Nobody can agree on anything related to online data. Other than the collection of it is obnoxious and intrusive. The encyclopedia of things we don't know about online advertising since we started collecting "big data" is comical. We don't know where our ads are running We don't know who's viewing our ads or if they're even human We don't know who's clicking on our ...

It started over 15 years ago. The web was becoming wildly popular. Agencies were quickly becoming consolidated into oversized, lumbering behemoths. The ad industry desperately needed a facelift to hide the fact that it had devolved from an industry keen on creativity into a clumsy financial contrivance of Wall Street sharpies. In order to align itself with the new gods of business - the wunderkind of Silicon Valley - the ad industry quickly adopted the customs, language, and conceits of that world. Among the most oppressive of those conceits was the worship of youth. “Young people are just smarter,” said a smirking Mark Zuckerberg. Of course, Zuckerberg wasn’t the world’s only arrogant prick. This attitude - though mainly unspoken - became a prevailing ethos in the advertising world. But advertising is not like science and math where the brightest tend to excel while young. Advertising has more in common with literature and art. Artists and writers tend to do their best work in their ...