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The current model of online advertising -- based on the 3-headed monster of tracking, surveillance marketing, and ad tech -- is unsustainable and will not survive. The forces against it are building and will shake up the advertising and marketing industries. Here is why it is doomed: It is too abusive of consumer rights and personal privacy. As of today, most people are not aware of how effectively the online ad industry is using questionable technology (ad tech) to track their every move . They are not aware that they are the targets of constant and unrelenting surveillance by the advertising and marketing industries. But over time this will change. If nothing else, clever politicians will adopt this as a cause célèbre and, because it is a non-partisan issue (all sides of the political spectrum oppose erosion of privacy), it will resonate with the public. Smart companies with Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives will get ahead of this wave and insist that their media partners a...

Get ready for what could be the PR, lobbying, and regulatory battle of the century as the Goobook (Google and Facebook) duopoly start to realize what the new regulations of the EU (European Union) may mean to their businesses. In May, a new regulation, called the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) will go into effect. More importantly, something called the ePrivacy Regulation may also go into effect. These regulations will seriously limit the collection of personal information by online entities. In fact, they may cripple substantial parts of their businesses. Right now, Goobook are essentially in the surveillance business - a business that yields tens of billions of dollars in revenue annually. By tracking us across the web, collecting information about us, and monetizing that information by selling it as targeting data to advertisers, Goobook have essentially taken over the online advertising industry, reaping 77% of online ad revenue in the US. But things are going to change....

This piece from the Type A Group Newsletter was very popular this week. I am reprinting it here today. As usual, the tin-eared aristocrats of the ad industry are on the wrong side of an important issue. Apple is planning to release a new version of its Safari browser with new cookie-blocking technology, called "Intelligent Tracking Prevention."  It will put strict limits on the ability of websites and advertisers to track us across the web. According to digital expert Don Marti it looks like Safari has built a set of features that will help protect us from the kind of tracking we don't like, while not screwing up features we like such as single sign-in to favorite sites (my words, not his.) Apple has said   “...users feel that trust is broken when they are being tracked and privacy-sensitive data about their web activity is acquired for purposes that they never agreed to.” Damn right. I even know a guy who wrote a book about that. Of course, all the major advertising tr...

Last week I did a video interview with Australian ad site Mumbrella. Here is an excerpt from that interview that discusses the issues raised in my new book BadMen: How Advertising Went From A Minor Annoyance To A Major Menace.  To watch it, click here .

Marc Pritchard -- chief brand officer at the world's largest advertiser, P&G -- has done the advertising industry a great service over the past 15 months. He is the first grown-up to acknowledge head-on the awfulness of online advertising as it is currently being practiced. Of course, some of us less-than-grown-ups have been writing about it for years, but very little attention is paid to the chirping of people without a $2.4 billion ad budget. Pritchard has spoken unambiguously about the problems of a murky and often corrupt system of buying and selling online advertising; the scourge of ad fraud; the problem of viewability; the opaque financial dealings of agencies; the issue of brand safety; the head-spinning number of third-party toll takers standing between advertisers and publishers; and the arbitrary and unreliable methods used for measuring ad delivery. He has done an admirable job and deserves praise. If you're an astute reader you probably feel a "but" c...

You'd think by now Facebook would have learned. For years anyone with a brain has known that Facebook "metrics" are a joke. They make shit up, imbeciles at agencies believe it, dimwit clients fund it, and - bingo - more ad money. Most famously, not long ago t hey inflated video viewing time on their site by as much as 80%. Recently in my newsletter , I recounted this story... Facebook Discovers 300,000 Invisible Swedes Facebook "metrics" have a long illustrious history of being laughable bullshit. Anyone who believes their numbers is an idiot. Here's a lovely example. According to a recently published report, Facebook says they reach 1.5 million Swedes between the ages of 15 and 24. The  problem here is that Sweden only has 1.2 million of 'em. If Facebook reached 100% of them, they'd still be 300,000 short. Sometimes I think Facebook's calculations are done by bloggers.  But today we have something even more delicious. According to Brian Wieser ...

Reprinted from Sunday's Newsletter My new book has just been released . It's called: BADMEN: How Advertising Went From A Minor Annoyance To A Major Menace. Maybe it's just me, but I think surveillance marketing, the collection and selling of personal information, online tracking, and ad tech are existential dangers to free societies. I think the monopolistic powers of some tech giants have gotten way out of control. I think the idea that "the consumer is in charge" is the stupidest, most naive bullshit we've been fed since some dimwit decided that people wanted to "join the conversation" about their frozen fish sticks. The book is about all these things.  It is also about how ad agency holding companies have turned into lapdogs for the corrupt and unsavory online ad industry and have, in the process, squandered their credibility. Oh, and it's also about fraud, terrorism, hacking, fake news, kickbacks and everything else that makes the online ad b...