Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
“We’re making the world a better place.” The phrase is thrown around so often in the tech world that it became a punch line on the HBO satire Silicon Valley. Executives controlling the largest tech titans—Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft—might even believe it. But in a searing presentation at Business Insider’s IGNITION conference in…
A new study from Ghostery, an anti-tracking tool, shows that an overwhelming majority (79%) of websites globally are tracking visitors’ data — with 10% of these sites actually sending user data to 10 companies or more. Why it matters: Trackers can collect and sell visitor data in ways that aren’t always obvious to consumers. Too many…
An ad-tech firm says it has discovered a large and sophisticated advertising-fraud operation in which fake websites and infected computers were used to scam advertisers and publishers out of upward of hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. Denmark-based Adform, identifier of the scheme, named it “Hyphbot” and estimates that it has been going on…
The alignment of new laws, reader advocacy, and technology has opened up a challenge to user tracking tools. While some express concern that an end to unbridled tracking will hinder the digital ecosystem, this is an enormous opportunity for publishers to take the lead in building the next generation of personalization technology. However, this evolution…
Some of the world’s biggest brands were ripped off by a digital fraud scheme that used a network of websites connected to US advertising industry insiders to steal what experts say could be millions of dollars, a BuzzFeed News investigation has found. Approximately 40 websites used special code that triggered an avalanche of fraudulent views…
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…
The big five agency holding companies are so deeply mired in surcommissions and client distrust that media agencies as a whole face an existential crisis. Last week saw the great and the good of the advertising world trundle to New York City for Advertising Week – four days of talks, events, awards and general navel-gazing….
Facebook seems to think it can advertise to more U.S. millennials than actually exist Image: Stephen Lam/Getty Images By Patrick Kulp2017-09-06 18:06:25 UTC Facebook is promising advertisers that it can reach 25 million more American millennials than the Census believes to exist. The social network boasts that ads on its platform will be seen by…
You’re half-way through a gaming session and the world is breaking apart around you as you run from attacking aliens. Firing as you go, you turn a corner and suddenly your view is filled with the sight of a brand new sedan. You see a cute dog at your local coffee shop. When you lean…
Transparency in agency relationships is a growing issue. Pivotal analyst Brian Wieser downgraded ratings on the four major agency holding companies on Monday, warning that the growing noise over agency kickbacks has caused him to “reassess some of our views on long-term holding company growth.” In a note to investors, he added that since marketers are…