This post is in response to Rick Webb’s irresponsible, emotional and mistaken commentary on how the advertising industry should not care about ad fraud and just let the #1 cybercrime be as it is.
Not only the original article found here is showing that the author has limited understanding of the subject matter, but it is a class example of the kind of behaviour that makes advertisers unpopular with the people of the world. Including the information security community that would actually be in position to help the advertising industry with its $10 billion per year problem. Where Rick really shoots himself (and the advertising industry) in the foot, is his response to my brief criticism about his post found here.
Rick starts with:
If pubs want to fix it, they certainly should go ahead and fix it. Seems a weird way to run a business to me. But it makes no difference to large brand advertisers. Also I suspect any “fix” would be imperfect and simply be a ploy to raise prices, which, no. I’m not especially for.
The question is not about if publishers should fix it, but about the fact that advertising fraud is without question the #1 cybercrime and the advertising industry collectively is not doing a whole lot about it. What it is doing, is focused on symptoms and not the problem itself. That’s the argument we are having, and the one you started by saying “it does not matter” in your original article.
Contrary to your comments, I have a difficulty believing that:
a) publishers are only capable of ploys to increase prices as opposed to actually somehow making the industry better
b) large brand advertisers see it the way as you suggest, that it’s all the same for them if their money goes to cyber criminals or legit vendors who are solving an actual problem
It does not sound like you are talking about actual marketing decision makers, but about middle-managers and henchmen who are more focused on getting through the day than anything else. I know there is a lot of that in advertising business and your attitudes certainly speak for it.
Further, I think what we are witnessing here in Rick’s comments the fact that often “the worst snobs are not the masters but the direct servants of the powerful”. (via @joaquin_tamiroff)
Rick continues…
I don’t consider any of this fraud, btw, any more than I considered it fraud when I bought yellow pages ads and I’d walk around town seeing piles of yellow pages sitting outside apartment buildings, and I knew they’d never be seen. I buy TV ads that air in the middle of the night on stations no one watches. I buy magazine ads that are printed and left lying around in 10,000 hotel rooms no one looks at.
The fact that you don’t consider advertising fraud fraud is a problem. It’s like saying that you don’t consider robbing banks a crime because you’ve wasted so much money on booze.
When a black hat is using various techniques to send fake traffic to advertising exchanges where agencies buy it on behalf of advertisers through advertising platforms, has nothing to do with you wasting your employers money in your past jobs. Which based on your comments is something you have no regrets for.
Also in the examples you give, in both cases there is a portion of the magazines that people see, and somebody will actually sometimes use the yellow pages. What fraud means, is that there is a criminal who takes all the money and the advertiser never gets anything in return. You can’t bundle legit buys and fraud buys together in the same way as you can bundle a magazine buy in to copies that are seen by people and copies that are not seen by people. Regardless of how much that idea pleases you or simplifies your life.
It’s not for the advertising industry, or an advertiser like yourself to decide if something should be done about the #1 cybercrime and the massive internet spam problem that relates to it.
Finally, I’ve recently read virtually every economic study of advertising back to the 18th century.
That’s a lot of reading.
There is *zero* theory about how any of this is a “burden on taxpayers.” It creates no physical waste or pollution, taxes are still collected, and there is no federal money being spent in this equation.
There is a strong body of evidence that shows the intimate connection media has with demand. The basic principle of demand is that it drives consumer spending. Consumer spending is 2/3 of US economy in 2015. In summary:
media drives demand > demand drives spending > spending drives economy
This causal relationship seems to be the whole point of investing on media and advertising. When there is a reduction in spending, or local companies have to pay too much to drive a given total of spending, the national economy suffers. If your argument is that consumer spending is already maxed out, then there would still be the negative effect coming from paying too much for media. Tax payers play an important role in funding government.
Maybe you don’t see literature on this topic because it’s obvious. When it comes to ad fraud literature, there is no substantial base of literature on the topic. We’ve actually reviewed everything that is available.
Over and out.