Facebook "Amazed" By Crap They've Been Selling

Facebook had to shut down one of its big projects last week because they "discovered" it was so rife with fraud.

They announced "we were amazed by the volume of valueless inventory" in one of their buying platforms.

You gotta feel sorry for those poor bastards. How were they to know? I mean c'mon, it's not like they have eyes or ears or anything.

Apparently everyone on the planet knows that online advertising is a cesspool of fraud and corruption except the people making a killing on it.

Next thing you know agencies will discover there are problems. Then, who knows, maybe even clients will figure it out.

Nah, only kidding. Clients are so fucking dumb they'll want more.

Count on Facebook to hide their irresponsible screwing of their customers behind a curtain of baloney. Here's what their Head Of Adtech had to say about the "amazing discovery":

"We were able to deliver ads to real people with unprecedented accuracy, but came up against many bad ads and fraud..."

Here's what that bullshit means in English: We delivered ads to millions of bots and six real people. But the six real people were, like, totally in our target group.

He then went on to say:

"This eye-opening experiment left us with a decision: Do we bury quality (which is industry-prevalent), or do we focus solely on building a product in our mission to help marketers deliver and measure true business value? We chose the latter. Value is the better and longer-term view."

Translation: We have some new stuff to sell you, so all the miracles we've been pushing on you all these years is now worthless crap.

Bullshit in online advertising? It's industry-prevalent.

(Update: Apparently the Facebook buying platform in question was in a test and hadn't been launched widely.)

3 Things I Don't Hate

I'm afraid I've developed a reputation as a person who hates everything. It's not true. I just hate most things.

People often come up to me and say, "yeah, I hate the web, too." Or, "Millennials really suck, right?" Or "you're right, social media is total bullshit."

And I have to either shake my head enigmatically to signal a kind of vague agreement or be a dick and say, "I kinda like millennials."

So just for my own clarity, here are 3 things that a lot of people think I hate, that I don't hate.

First, I don't hate online advertising. I think as it exists today it is annoying, ineffectual, and wasteful. But I think there is a future for it. All that needs to happen is for adtech to go away, and for agencies to start hiring some talented people to do it. I think we'd be surprised that it might light a spark under the moribund agency business.

Next, I don't hate social media. I actually enjoy social media a lot and have been using it with modest effectiveness to promote my writing and speaking businesses.

Third, I don't hate millennials. I actually had a hand in creating one and she's pretty amazing.

Here's what I do hate: I hate the ignorant obsession with these things, and lack of perspective about them -- which are the hallmarks of the contemporary marketing and advertising industries.

I hate the fools who constantly exaggerate the effectiveness of digital advertising and conveniently ignore the enormous problems.

I hate the overblown promises and claims of social media "experts" and the naively gullible marketing industry that buys into them.

I hate the embarrassing obsession with millennials that has been the fetish of the self-absorbed ad industry for almost a decade.

But let's not blame the objects of our foolishness for the foolishness itself. Online advertising doesn't create itself. Social media isn't responsible for the fantasy of social media marketing. Millennials never tried to take control of our minds.

All these manias and fixations are the result of a marketing industry that is lost in space and devoid of perspective.

That's the only thing I really hate.

The Amazing Tale Of Bill Grizack

Bill Grizack is an advertising strategist. But he's not just any advertising strategist. This guy is special. According to AgencySpy:

"Despite being indicted late last year by the State of North Carolina and intentionally defrauding at least three different agencies, Grizack continued to gain employment as a senior strategist working on legitimate pieces of business like AT&T and remained employed almost literally until the very moment the news of his guilty plea broke last week."

Here are some of the scams Grizack is alleged to have run on agencies over the past few years:

• He convinced an agency that he had landed $269 million in client contracts and on that basis they made him a partner and hired dozens of people.

• At more than one agency he faked contracts with large, imaginary accounts -- big accounts like Coca-Cola, Brown-Forman and McDonald's.

• Up until recently, he apparently was working at three San Francisco agencies at the same time without anyone knowing it.

The incredible story of Grizack first appeared in the Winston-Salem (NC) Journal and has been nicely followed-up by Patrick Coffee of AgencySpy.

Part of this story is understandable. It is very difficult to get accurate information these days on people you are hiring. References are mostly worthless. Having been an agency ceo, I know that every lawyer tells every agency head not to provide reference information. Providing any kind of comments on a former employee opens you up to all kinds of legal mischief.

But once the agencies hired him, how did they accept his stories of having landed clients that they never saw? 

According to one story, one of the three jobs Grizack held simultaneously in SF was at Interbrand (owned by Omnicom) where he was senior director of strategy on the real AT&T account.

I've said a lot of nasty things about ad strategists over the years (like here and here). I'm sure there are some brilliant ones.

But this guy's story reinforces every skeptic's worst suspicions.