More on advertising and what sucks about it
by Doc Searls Thursday, October 26, 2017

The Onion: Future of Advertising is More and Better Advertising, Advertising Industry Says. Just kidding. The Onion didn't say that, and the link goes to my anti-bullshit series on advertising. More fodder follows. 

Top Ten Reasons Why Online Advertising Must Change, by the great Bob Hoffman, aka @AdContrarian and author of Bad Men and other good books. Why isn't this in AdAge or MediaPost? Sorry, dumb question. We all know why. Colonel Jessup explains.

Juniper Research in BusinessWireDigital Advertising Spend to Reach $420 billion, Despite Impact of Ad Blockers.

Speaking of ad blockers, says here: 1) According to GobalWebIndex,t 37% of all mobile users, worldwide, were blocking ads by January of 2016, and another 42% would like to; 2) There are than 4.77 billion mobile phone users in the world today; 3) 37% of 4.77 billion is more than 1.7 billion; and 4) that's more than 2x the population of the Western Hemisphere (565.265 million in North America and 420.458 in South America). And that's just mobile devices.

White Ops Predicts that up to $3.5 Billion in Ad Spend Could be Lost to Fraud in Q4. Champion investor Michael Burry in The Big Short: "One hallmark of mania is the rapid rise in the incidence and complexity of fraud." Hm.

IAB: Online Video Spend Overtakes Banner Ads for First Time. As if anybody on the receiving end likes either of them.

ForbesWhat Is the Right Response By Marketers To The Rise Of Mobile Ad Blocking? By Brian Handly, CEO of Reveal Mobile, "which helps companies generate more revenue via highly accurate location data," for the Forbes Technology Council Elite ("CIOs, CTOs & execs offer firsthand insights on tech & business"). How about respecting what is clearly the biggest boycott in human hstory? (But they won't. See Col. Jessup, above.)

LA TimesWhy bad ads deserve to die, and what might replace them. Completely misses the tracking issue. By the way, the LA Times is one of the worst tracking offenders. My browser reports "Privacy Badger detected 49 potential trackers on this page."

Mediapost: "GDPR is like a meteorite hurtling toward earth." Yep. Like I say here, with another metaphor.

Mediatel: TV sponsorship - the answer to all of advertising's woes? Answer: no, but to some.

Business Insider: Google's plan to block some ads has ad-tech companies scrambling — and calling it a dictator. This is like a bad bug zapper arguing with doomed bugs.

Recode: Former Chartbeat CEO Tony Haile wants to save the media industry by blocking ads—His new startup, Scroll, will charge consumers once for an ad-free experience across many news sites on all platforms. Bookmarked: need to know more about this one.

TPMJosh Marshall on what Apple is doing against advertising. This one too.

AdAgeHOW TO TRANSFORM YOUR TRADITIONAL SELL-SIDE AD ORGANIZATION. That's what we used to call the "publishing" or the "advertising" department. It's what mostly got fired when adtech showed up.