The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that...
"An astounding 54% of online display ads...between May of 2012 and February of this year weren't seen by anyone...
"A significant number of display-ad "impressions"... are based on fake traffic. Malicious software makes a website think a person is actually on a page and ads are served up to that fake visitor. In other scams, ads show up on several Web pages but they are hidden behind a window on a website that is the size of a pencil point."Astounding? To whom?
Back in March I wrote...
...online ad hustlers are picking the pockets of marketing morons and their clueless but oh-so-fashionable agencies.Only fools and CMOs believe the bullshit that the liars, con men, and crooks in the world of online ad networks and ad exchanges are peddling. The Journal went on to say...
"The finding implies that billions of marketing dollars are being poured down a digital drain."Implies? It doesn't imply anything. It confirms.
You know what I love most about this? I love that all the "big data" geniuses and cybermetric prodigies can't even figure out that they're getting fucked blind by the online ad hustlers who are selling them this garbage.
As for the famous precision targeting of online advertising, according to the Journal...
"ConAgra's ads sometimes reached its preferred demographic—women aged 25 to 54—only about 30% to 40% of the time."What a joke this whole online advertising scam has turned out to be.
The amazing thing is that these findings by comScore won't change a damn thing. Watch -- agencies will continue to sell this trash to their clients. They know when they have a cash cow and they'll keep milking it until the cow drops dead.
Of course, they'll tell their clients...well, yeah, everyone else is getting screwed but we have controls in place...and the dimwit clients will believe it.
As I said here in April...
When you take a gullible industry that has acted in an irresponsible and foolhardy manner to sell snake oil to its clients, add to that some very sophisticated crooks who are way ahead of the naive buyers and sellers of ads, and top it off with indecipherable metrics that are intentionally designed to confuse and mislead, you have yourself a very toxic blend.The display ad industry is crooked. Agencies are greedy. Clients are clueless.
Watching these clowns is the best show in town.
