by Tim Hwang
41. “MRC Viewable Ad Impression Measurement Guidelines,” IAB Emerging Innovations Task Force, www.iab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/MRC-Viewable-Ad-Impression-Measurement-Guideline.pdf.
42. Ibid.
43. “Standards, Guidelines & Best Practices,” IAB, www.iab.com/guidelines/.
44. See, for example, Michael Lewis, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt (New York: W. W. Norton, 2015), which describes how parallel developments in the financial markets produced an explosion of trading activity.
45. Raghuram G. Rajan, “Has Financial Development Made the World Riskier?” (NBER working paper, no. 11728, Nov. 2005), www.nber.org/papers/w11728.
46. Adam Tooze, Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World (New York: Viking, 2018), 66.
47. Rajan, “Has Financial Development Made the World Riskier?,” 6.
48. See, for example, NYIAX Inc., www.nyiax.com.
49. Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, preface to This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011), xxviii.
50. See, for example, Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011), chap. 2.
51. Reinhart and Rogoff, “Preamble: Some Initial Intuitions on Financial Fragility and the Fickle Nature of Confidence,” in This Time Is Different.
52. Reinhart and Rogoff, This Time Is Different, xxxiv.
53. Cyrus Sanati, “Prince Finally Explains His Dancing Comment,” DealBook (blog), New York Times, April 8, 2010, dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/prince-finally-explains-his-dancing-comment.
3. Opacity
1. George Bradt, “Wanamaker Was Wrong—the Vast Majority of Advertising Is Wasted,” Forbes, Sept. 14, 2016, www.forbes.com/sites/georgebradt/2016/09/14/wanamaker-was-wrong-the-vast-majority-of-advertising-is-wasted.
2. Owen Gibson, “Cash from Clicking,” Guardian, April 8, 2002, www.theguardian.com/media/2002/apr/08/mondaymediasection9.
3. Miguel Helft, “Google’s Net (and Stock) Up Sharply,” New York Times, Oct. 17, 2008, B1.
4. Randall Rothenberg, “Bye-Bye,” Wired, Jan. 1, 1998, www.wired.com/1998/01/rothenberg. Rothenberg would later become the head of the IAB.
5. “The Ultimate Marketing Machine,” Economist, July 6, 2006, 69.
6. See Adam Berke, Gregory Fulton, and Lauren Vaccarello, The Retargeting Playbook: How to Turn Web-Window Shoppers into Customers (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2014).
7. See Jennifer Langston, “For $1000, Anyone Can Purchase Online Ads to Track Your Location and App Use,” UW News, Oct. 18, 2017, www.washington.edu/news/2017/10/18/for-1000-anyone-can-purchase-online-ads-to-track-your-location-and-app-use.
8. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report: Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States (2011), 118, fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/5034. A discussion of the role of rating agencies in the crisis and the fact that certain investors were limited to buying only securities highly rated by these organizations.
9. For a useful overview of these tools, see Dominik Kosorin, Introduction to Programmatic Advertising (2016).
10. See, for example, Nathaniel Popper, “The Robots Are Coming for Wall Street,” New York Times Magazine, Feb. 25, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/the-robots-are-coming-for-wall-street.html.
11. David Segal, “The Great Unwatched,” New York Times, May 4, 2014, BU1.
12. Paul P. Murphy, Kaya Yurieff, and Gianluca Mezzofiore, “Exclusive: YouTube Ran Ads from Hundreds of Brands on Extremist Channels,” CNNMoney, April 20, 2018, money.cnn.com/2018/04/19/technology/youtube-ads-extreme-content-investigation/index.html.
13. See, for example, Kelsey Sutton, “Advertisers Are More Concerned Than Ever About Brand Safety, According to New Study,” Adweek, June 7, 2018, www.adweek.com/digital advertisers-are-more-concerned-than-ever-about-brand -safety-according-to-new-study.
14. Ross Benes, “Five Charts Explaining the State of Brand Safety,” eMarketer, July 27, 2018, www.emarketer.com/content/five-charts-explaining-the-state-of-brand-safety.
15. “The State of Programmatic Media Buying: New ANA Research,” Advertising Research Foundation, Jan. 5, 2018, thearf.org/category/news-you-can-use/the-state-of-programmatic-media-buying-new-ana-research.
16. Kurt Wagner, “Facebook Is Hiring Another 3,000 People to Pull Down Violent and Inappropriate Content,” Recode, May 3, 2017, www.recode.net/2017/5/3/15531478/facebook-hiring-3000-people-violent-inappropriate-video-content-post.
17. See James Vincent, “AI Won’t Relieve the Misery of Facebook’s Human Moderators,” The Verge, Feb. 27, 2019, www.theverge.com/2019/2/27/18242724/facebook-moderation-ai-artificial-intelligence-platforms.
18. Benjamin Bain, “Wall Street Dark Pools to Come out of Shadows Thanks to SEC,” Bloomberg, July 18, 2018, www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-18/wall-street-dark-pools-set-to-come-out-of-shadows-thanks-to-sec.
19. See Michael Lewis, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt (New York: W. W. Norton, 2015), chap. 2, which describes the problem of front-running in greater detail.
20. See Yuyu Chen, “Brands and Agencies on the Pros and Cons of Private Marketplaces,” Digiday, Nov. 15, 2016, digiday.com/marketing/brands-agencies-pros-cons-private-marketplaces.
21. “More than 80% of Digital Display Ads Will Be Bought Programmatically in 2018,” eMarketer, April 9, 2018, www.emarketer.com/content/more-than-80-of-digital-display-ads-will-be-bought-programmatically-in-2018.
22. Ross Benes, “Ad Spending on Private Marketplaces Will Pass Open Exchanges Next Year,” eMarketer, May 8, 2019, www.emarketer.com/content/ad-spending-on-private-marketplaces-will-pass-open-exchanges-next-year.
23. Ken Auletta, Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (and Everything Else) (New York: Penguin Press, 2018), chap. 7, describes the disintermediation threat online platforms pose to agencies.
24. Issie Lapowsky, “A New Facebook Lawsuit Makes ‘Pivot to Video’ Even More Shortsighted,” Wired, Oct. 17, 2018, www.wired.com/story/facebook-lawsuit-pivot-to-video-mistake.
25. Facebook, “What the Shift to Video Means for Creators,” Jan. 7, 2015, www.facebook.com/facebookmedia/blog/what-the-shift-to-video-means-for-creators.
26. Pavithra Mohan, “Mark Zuckerberg: Soon, the Majority of Content We Consume Will Be Video,” Fast Company, Feb. 22, 2016, www.fastcompany.com/3057024/mark-zuckerberg-soon-the-majority-of-content-we-consume-will-be-video.
27. Heidi N. Moore, “The Secret Cost of Pivoting to Video,” Columbia Journalism Review, Sept. 26, 2017, www.cjr.org/business_of_news/pivot-to-video.php.
28. Ibid.
29. Steven Perlberg, “Facebook Apologizes for Video Metric Miscalculation,” Wall Street Journal, Sept. 23, 2016, www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-apologizes-for-video-metric-miscalculation-1474641054.
30. Facebook, “An Update on Metrics and Reporting,” Nov. 16, 2016, www.facebook.com/business/news/metrics-reporting-update.
31. Jason Kint (@jason_kint), “Oomph. Pivotal analyst just dropped report showing Facebook Ad Manager claims 25 million more 18–34 year olds than the US census,” Twitter, Sept. 5, 2017, 6:12 p.m., twitter.com/jason_kint/status/905237289588199425.
32. Sara Fischer, “Facebook Touts Video Metrics, Outlines More Scrutiny for Show Funding,” Axios, Dec. 13, 2018, www.axios.com/facebook-touts-video-watch-platform-metrics-17385ab1-2861-4e12-a9ca-1866e1faddd8.html.
33. Kelsey Sutton, “Facebook Hid Inflated Video Ad Metrics Error for Over a Year, Advertisers Allege,” Adweek, October 17, 2018, www.adweek.com/digital/facebook-hid-inflated-video-ad-metrics-error-for-over-a-year-advertisers-allege.
34. Ibid.
35. See Marty Swant, “Media Rating Council Gives Facebook Accreditation for Ad Impressions,” Adweek, April 5, 2018, www.adweek.com/digital/media-rating-councils-gives-facebook-accreditation-for-ad-impressions; Babak Pahlavan, “New MRC Accreditations and Partners for Google and YouTube
Ads Measurement,” Google Ads Blog, Sept. 26, 2018, www.blog.google/products/ads/transparency-choice-ads-measurement.
36. See, for example, Pahlavan, “New MRC Accreditations and Partners for Google and YouTube Ads Measurement.”
37. Allison Schiff, “Facebook and GroupM Tussle on Third-Party Viewability Verification,” AdExchanger, June 3, 2015, adexchanger.com/online-advertising/facebook-and-groupm-tussle-on-third-party-viewability-verification.
4. Subprime Attention
1. Alyson Shontell, “This Playground Is a Significant Part of Twitter’s Founding Story,” Business Insider, Sept. 18, 2013, www.businessinsider.com/twitters-founding-story-south-park-san-francisco-2013-9.
2. See, generally, Gary Wolf, Wired: A Romance (New York: Random House, 2003), chap. 7.
3. Adrienne LaFrance, “The First-Ever Banner Ad on the Web,” Atlantic, April 21, 2017, www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-first-ever-banner-ad-on-the-web/523728.
4. Mark Irvine, “Google Ads Benchmarks for YOUR Industry [Updated!],” The WordStream Blog, Aug. 27, 2019, www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/02/29/google-adwords-industry-benchmarks.
5. “Social Advertising Benchmark Report,” Salesforce.com, www.salesforce.com/form/marketingcloud/social-ads-benchmark.jsp. The year 2013 shows a range between 0.18 percent and 0.36 percent.
6. Google, “Better Click Quality on Display Ads Improves the User and Advertiser Experience,” Inside AdWords (blog), June 25, 2015, adwords.googleblog.com/2015/06/better-click-quality-on-display-ads.html.
7. “Comscore and Starcom USA Release Updated ‘Natural Born Clickers’ Study Showing 50 Percent Drop in Number of U.S. Internet Users Who Click on Display Ads,” Comscore, Oct. 1, 2009, www.comscore.com/Insights/Press-Releases/2009/10/Comscore-and-Starcom-USA-Release-Updated-Natural-Born-Clickers-Study-Showing-50-Percent-Drop-in-Number-of-U.S.-Internet-Users-Who-Click-on-Display-Ads.
8. Tom Blake, Chris Nosko, and Steven Tadelis, “Consumer Heterogeneity and Paid Search Effectiveness: A Large Scale Field Experiment” (NBER working paper, no. 20171, May 2014), abstract, 32, www.nber.org/papers/w20171.
9. Randall A. Lewis and David H. Reiley, “Advertising Effectively Influences Older Users: How Field Experiments Can Improve Measurement and Targeting,” Review of Industrial Organization 44, no. 2 (2014): 147–59.
10. Alex Kantrowitz, “56% of Digital Ads Served Are Never Seen, Says Google,” AdAge, Dec. 3, 2014, adage.com/article/digital/56-digital-ads-served-google/296062.
11. “In-Target, Viewability, and Invalid Traffic: Campaign Benchmarks Across the Globe,” Comscore, April 21, 2017, www.comscore.com/Insights/Blog/In-Target-Viewability-and-Invalid-Traffic-Campaign-benchmarks-across-the-globe.
12. Duncan Stewart and Mark Casey, “Are Consumers ‘Adlergic’? A Look at Ad-Blocking Habits,” Deloitte, deloitte.wsj.com/cmo/2018/04/03/are-consumers-adlergic-a-look-at-ad-blocking-habits.
13. “2017 Adblock Report,” Blockthrough, Feb. 1, 2017, www .blockthrough.com/2017/02/01/adblockreport.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Michael Rosenwald, “The Digital Media Industry Needs to React to Ad Blockers … or Else,” Columbia Journalism Review, Sept.–Oct. 2015, www.cjr.org/business_of_news/will_ad_blockers_kill_the_digital_media_industry.php.
17. See Facebook, Inc. Form 10-K for Fiscal Year Ended December 31, 2015, EDGAR, Securities and Exchange Commission, 2016, www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000132680116000043/fb-12312015x10k.htm. 2015 Facebook revenue was $17.9 billion.
18. “2017 Adblock Report,” Blockthrough.
19. “Ad Blocking: Who Blocks Ads, Why and How to Win Them Back,” IAB, www.iab.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/IAB-Ad-Blocking-2016-Who-Blocks-Ads-Why-and-How-to-Win-Them-Back.pdf.
20. Randall Rothenberg, “Ad Blocking: The Unnecessary Internet Apocalypse,” AdAge, Sept. 22, 2015, www.adage.com/article/digitalnext/ad-blocking-unnecessary-internet-apocalypse/300470.
21. Jim Leichenko, “The Most Expensive Keywords on Google—Anniversary Edition,” Kantar Media, Sept. 4, 2018, www.kantar.media/eKbojrm.
22. Alexandra Bruell, “Fraudulent Web Traffic Continues to Plague Advertisers, Other Businesses,” Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2018, www.wsj.com/articles/fraudulent-web-traffic-continues-to-plague-advertisers-other-businesses-1522234801.
23. “Ad Fraud to Cost Advertisers $19 Billion in 2018, Representing 9% of Total Digital Advertising Spend,” Juniper Research, Sept. 26, 2017, www.juniperresearch.com/press/press-releases/ad-fraud-to-cost-advertisers-$19-billion-in-2018.
24. George P. Slefo, “Report: For Every $3 Spent on Digital Ads, Fraud Takes $1,” AdAge, Oct. 22, 2015, adage.com/article/digital/ad-fraud-eating-digital-advertising-revenue/301017.
25. Susan Bidel et al., “Poor Quality Ads Cost US Marketers $7.4 Billion in 2016,” Forrester Research, March 30, 2017, www.forrester.com/report/Poor+Quality+Ads+Cost+US+Marketers+74+Billion+In+2016/-/E-RES136115.
26. Ross Benes, “The State of Video Ad Fraud,” Digiday, Nov. 2, 2017, digiday.com/marketing/state-video-ad-fraud.
27. Stuart Feil, “The Massive Scale of Mobile Ad Fraud,” Adweek, March 22, 2018.
28. Jessica Davies, “The FT Warns Advertisers After Discovering High Levels of Domain Spoofing,” Digiday, Sept. 27, 2017, digiday.com/media/ft-warns-advertisers-discovering-high-levels-of-domain-spoofing.
29. Michael H. Keller, “The Flourishing Business of Fake YouTube Views,” New York Times, Aug. 11, 2018, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/11/technology/youtube-fake-view-sellers.html.
30. Craig Silverman, “Apps Installed on Millions of Android Phones Tracked User Behavior to Execute a Multimillion-Dollar Ad Fraud Scheme,” BuzzFeed News, Oct. 23, 2018, www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/how-a-massive-ad-fraud-scheme-exploited-android-phones-to.
31. Lucia Moses, “‘The Professionalization of Fraud’: Agencies Are Alarmed by ‘Methbot’ Scheme,” Digiday, Dec. 21, 2016, digiday.com/media/professionalization-fraud-agencies-alarmed-methbot-scheme.
32. Benes, “The State of Video Ad Fraud.” Fraud accounts for 22 percent of ad spending in video.
33. See, generally, Ken Auletta, Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (and Everything Else) (New York: Penguin Press, 2018), chaps. 1–2.
34. Babak Pahlavan, “New MRC Accreditations and Partners for Google and YouTube Ads Measurement,” Google Ads Blog, Sept. 26, 2018, www.blog.google/products/ads/transparency-choice-ads-measurement; Allison Schiff, “Facebook and GroupM Tussle on Third-Party Viewability Verification,” AdExchanger, June 3, 2015, adexchanger.com/online-advertising/facebook-and-groupm-tussle-on-third-party-viewability-verification.
35. “Ads.Txt—Authorized Digital Sellers,” IAB Tech Lab, iabtechlab.com/ads-txt.
36. Ross Benes, “The State of Ads.Txt,” Digiday, Jan. 22, 2018, digiday.com/marketing/state-ads-txt.
37. Bruce Schneier, “Detecting Adblocker Blockers,” Schneier on Security (blog), Jan. 5, 2018, www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/01/detecting_adblo.html.
38. Sapna Maheshwari, “Adblock Plus, Created to Protect Users from Ads, Instead Opens the Door,” New York Times, Sept. 18, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/09/19/business/media/adblock-plus-created-to-protect-users-from-ads-opens-the-door.html.
39. Sam Barker, “Future Digital Advertising: AI, Ad Fraud, and Ad Blocking, 2017–2022,” Juniper Research, www.juniperresearch.com/researchstore/content-commerce/future-digital-advertising.
40. Ross Benes, “Study: Top Publishers Like The New York Times and The Washington Post Lose $3.5 Million a Day to Domain Spoofing,” Digiday, Dec. 12, 2017, digiday.com/media/using-ads-txt-publishers-catch-buyers-spending-1-billion-year-fake-video-inventory.
41. “Ads.Txt Reduces Ad Fraud by 10%, but Double-Digit Ad Fraud Rates Persist,” Pixalate Blog, Sept. 25, 2018, blog.pixalate.com/does-ads-txt-reduce-ad-fraud.
42. Ross Benes, “How Publishers Are Getting Fooled by Ads.Txt Fraud,” Digiday, Nov. 6, 2017, digiday.com/media/publishers-getting-fooled-ads-txt-fr
aud.
43. Lara O’Reilly, “Scammers Target Ad Industry’s Initiative to Thwart Fraud,” Wall Street Journal, Feb. 7, 2019, www.wsj.com/articles/scammers-target-ad-industrys-initiative-to-thwart-fraud-11549537200.
44. Patrick Kulp, “Mobile Ad Fraud Is Surging as Scammers Get Smarter, According to New Report,” Adweek, May 24, 2018, www.adweek.com/digital/mobile-ad-fraud-is-surging-as-scammers-get-smarter-researchers-say.
45. “2017 Adblock Report,” Blockthrough.
46. Garett Sloane, “Snapchat May Force Users to Watch Three Seconds of Ads Before Skipping,” AdAge, Jan. 2, 2018, adage.com/article/digital/snapchat-considers-making-users-sit-3-seconds-ads/311775.