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Dear Online Advertising Industry, I have noticed recently that you have become very passionate about transparency. Mark Zuckerberg, you have said you want to bring Facebook to an " even higher standard of transparency." Google, you have issued a "Transparency Report" IAB - you've said "Transparency Is The Key To Programmatic Success" Marc Pritchard of P&G, you have given an "...impassioned speech on transparency." Keith Weed of Unilever, you have "...demand(ed) more transparency" from digital media. Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP, you have said "it’s important to be transparent." 4As - you have issued the " 4A’s Transparency Guiding Principles of Conduct " ANA - you even created and celebrated Transparency Day! (Was there a parade? Did you have a Transparency Eve party?) It seems like transparency is all the rage in the online ad world. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that talking about transparency...

The current model of online advertising is only 20 years old but it is already far beyond its sell-by date. It has become a ridiculous anachronism, born in an era of naive digital utopianism, and now absurdly outmoded and unsuited to its job. In no particular order, here are 10 reasons why online advertising must change. 1. Fraud: Online advertising fraud is completely out of control. According to JPMorgan Chase it has grown by over 100% in the past year to over $16 billion. There are no serious impediments to its continued metastasizing. The fraudsters are miles ahead of the feckless cyber-security crowd who are filling their clients full of delusional happy talk. According to the World Federation of Advertisers , within 8 years ad fraud may become the second largest source of criminal income in the world, after drug trafficking.  2. Waste: The amount of money advertisers are wasting on online advertising is astounding. Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer of the world's largest...

A few weeks ago, in a blog post entitled " The Battle Of The Century , " I wrote about the lobbying battle that is brewing over the EU's proposed ePrivacy Regulation . If adopted the ePrivacy Regulation, along with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) will make it much harder for online marketers and media in the European Union to collect personal private information about users without prior consent. In other words, it will make it hard for them to track us all over the web and collect, exploit, and sell the information they are harvesting without our explicit consent or knowledge.  Last week, another shot in this battle was fired. A consortium of advertising, marketing and media companies sent a misleading and disingenuous letter to the members of the European Parliament attacking one of the core points of the ePrivacy Regulation. I have posted the letter here if you'd like to read it. The lead sentence of the letter reads...     "ePrivacy Regulation ...

It has become an article of faith in the marketing business that the future of marketing is about data.   "Data are to this century what oil was to the last one: a driver of growth and change," says The Economist. Scientific American says, "The digital revolution is in full swing...in 2016 we produced as much data as in the entire history of humankind..." The primacy of data in marketing has been beaten into us for the past 10 years. In fact, it has become such a platitude that we no longer even stop to think about what it means. Data sounds very scientific, impersonal and hygienic. But it is not. When marketers talk about data what they usually mean is personal private information about us that is collected, traded, sold and exploited without our knowledge or consent. To marketers, data is not all numbers and algorithms. It is your sexual preferences, your religious beliefs or lack thereof, your banking details, your medical and psychological diagnoses, your work...

If you would like an example of how the online ad industry's insatiable lust for "data" - usually just a pleasanter term for personal private information about us - has defiled our society and undermined our right to privacy, look no further than Yahoo. In my new book, BadMen , I tell the story of how in 2014 Yahoo demonstrated utter disregard for the privacy and security of its users. Their security chief warned them that their platform was woefully insecure and easily hacked. He recommended a system of end-to-end encryption to protect their users. The ceo and the board rejected his recommendation because implementing the proper security measures would mean they could no longer scan the emails and text messages of their users and use this information to create targeting opportunities for their advertising clients. Soon thereafter, half a billion Yahoo accounts were hacked. But that ain't nothing. It was revealed yesterday that a year earlier, in 2013, every single Ya...

It was all going to be so amazing. It all sounded so great. Advertising was going to be amazing. People weren't going to just look at online ads, they were going to interact with them. People were going to go online and “join the conversation” about our brands and start their own conversations. And these conversations would grow virally and it wouldn't cost us a penny. "If you can harness social media marketing, you don’t have to pay for advertising any more,” said a partner in Sequoia Capital. It sounded so amazing. And it's turned out to be so appalling. The online advertising "ecosystem" is a complete disaster. Ad fraud is out of control. The World Federation of Advertisers says that within eight years it could be the second largest source of criminal income in the world, after drug trafficking. The ANA says corruption within the agency media buying community is " pervasive ." Viewability of online ads is reported to be below 50%. Interactivi...