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Agency Phonies Piling On


The Great Pepsi Bloodbath of last week had one salutary effect -- it helped divert our attention from the YouTube "brand safety" scandal.

We could all pretend how shocked we were at Pepsi's stupidity instead of pretending how shocked we were at adtech sleaziness.

Six weeks ago, if you had said that online advertising was a corrupt and dangerous pile of shit, all the  experts would have looked at you like you had three heads and called you an ignorant dinosaur (believe me, I know.)

Today, these same geniuses are suddenly shocked and outraged by the problems of adtech and are calling for big changes. All it took were a few headlines and promptly everyone who had been working the online ad hustle for the past 10 years was shocked...shocked, I tell you.

As Andy Ball said in Ad Age recently...
"The same folks that took their clients off-roading into digital land in the first place -- initially bouncing through the well-documented shortcomings of display, and now crashing into the emergent problems with programmatic buying....Suddenly, agencies want answers from publishers."
It is painful to listen to the people who have been making excuses and cashing checks for years now bemoaning the terrible state of the industry and how we've all been victimized by the terrible people at YouTube.

Along with these bozos are the outraged CMOs who have been asleep at the wheel and had to wait for the news media to tell them what they should have known years ago.

What a load of crap.

Online advertising has not changed in the past 6 weeks. The corruption, fraud, deceit, absence of responsibility and accountability that have plagued it for years did not suddenly appear in February.

I don't know what's worse, listening to nitwits tell us how amazing online advertising is or listening to their sudden squeals of disapproval.

You have to laugh as the phonies who have been selling their clients delusional horseshit about online advertising for over a decade are suddenly demanding to see the manager. 

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