Melvin Wilson’s Post

I can speak this, as the platform Forbes Advisor, is an ad business disguised as a advice marketplace, but everyone thinks it is the real Forbes. The company the owns Forbes is called Integrated Whale Media Investment. (Real name no gimmicks) This leads to the a closer look at the entire Ad industry and the recent death of the cookie. Enshittification Theory- coined by Cory Doctorow... the pattern of decreasing quality observed on online services and products. Also called platform decay. The entire internet is about 40% BOTS at this point anyway, because these companies are more interested in pleasing shareholders than the users. The data sets on what what was user generated content are now poisoned because the algorithms are easily tricked.. Now they are releasing AI search engines which will be crawled by AI bots to make everyone happy, the advertisers with seemingly real users (AI) The platforms will benefit from the revenue and all the content will be bad for the rest of us. Forbes is not alone in this.

Nick Swimer was published in The Media Leader discussing the necessity for additional tools and measures to combat ad fraud, emphasizing the critical need to disrupt the sources of revenue supporting fraudulent activities in online advertising. Read the full article here: #adfraud #advertising

More illuminating reporting about digital ad fraud from Adalytics. While many advertisers say they aren't concerned with MFAs, this analysis is proof positive that it's a widely pervasive issue. Demanding #transparency is the only way to be sure of where your campaigns are running and protect your investment from wasteful - and potentially harmful - ad environments. #demandtransparency #VAB

Right or wrong, ad verification technologies are the scapegoats whenever there’s a blunder in #advertising. Be it fraud, ID spoofing or shady sites, these tools usually end up shouldering the blame. So it was no surprise when recent ad tech snafus dragged these companies into the spotlight. Marketers were left scratching their heads when Forbes was caught running a site for ad dollar arbitrage, wondering why their verification tech missed it. The same eyebrow-raising frustration hit when Colossus was mismatching cookie IDs. They couldn’t help but ask: Where were DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science during all this? #adverification

A new report from Adalytics, an ad quality firm, alleges that #Forbes systematically misled advertisers into believing they were buying media on Forbes.com when they were actually buying media on a secret, spammy ‘made for advertising’ (MFA) subdomain, www3 (.) Forbes (.) com Commenting, Chair of the UK Stop Ad Funded Crime (UKSAFC) group, Ian Moss, said: “The scale of fraud alleged by this new report is staggering. The UKSAFC has for some time been warning about practices like MFA sites which deceive brands into paying for what they believe is legitimate ad space – but is in fact a sophisticated way to defraud them of their ad spend. This report should serve as a wake-up call to industry and policymakers about how pervasive fraud is in the online advertising ecosystem. Policymakers must urgently introduce measures to improve transparency so everyone in the system can verify who is being paid and that views are legitimate. Only then can we tackle widespread ad fraud and restore confidence in online advertising.” Read the full story on The Drum here: https://lnkd.in/eBtZFfbw

Ad fraud is estimated to be in the billions of dollars in Australia, with wastage totaling around $6bn according to recent research shared in this article from Mediaweek. With consumer data protection becoming a growing concern, it's crucial to consider what local, regulated media vendors can offer in both traditional and digital formats. Don't let wastage and ad fraud impact your bottom line this year when alternatives are available! #boomtown #effectiveadvertisinginvestment

Ad fraud on MFA sites continues to be a widespread problem, and the fallout from many of the recent discoveries in the space is bringing this to the attention of advertisers everywhere. While this may inspire some firms to cut back on advertising or switch to other ad channels like OOH, it also serves as an opportunity for growing ad tech businesses that have built-in accountability measures that can restore trust. #AdTech #AdFraud

Oh, the delicious irony of the ad tech world—supposedly as transparent as the cleanest glass, yet often as clear as mud. Andrew Casale of Index Exchange stepped up at Digiday to unpack the shadowy side of programmatic advertising where, despite all our fancy tech toys, fraud is far from being a relic of the past. #mfa #fraud Picture this: a realm where Made for Advertising (MFA) sites thrive, not despite the age of enlightenment, but because of it. Casale, with the frankness of someone who's seen it all, laments the pseudo-evolution of traffic quality. We've gone from bot-driven to human-driven deceit—yes, the traffic now has a pulse, but it's hardly worth the bandwidth it consumes. What's more, even with tools that could spotlight these shenanigans, the industry prefers to play blind man’s bluff, letting "key performance indicators" lead the way right off a cliff. It’s high time for a clean-up, Casale argues, aiming to ax these MFA miscreants from ad exchanges. The man’s not just talking tough; he's calling for a revolution. Will the ad tech sector step up, or will it continue to let dubious metrics rule the roost? Only time will tell. https://lnkd.in/eMG6vMFz

Useful & actionable - A neat breakdown of the recent Adalytics Report & Colossus SSP claims from MediaSense's Jamie Richards CMgr FCMI - with grounded and pragmatic steps for advertisers & their partners:

Again.... another Online Ad fraud. Great work by Adalytics. Uncovering that Forbes has been misleading major advertisers. Campaigns that were supposed to run on Forbes' primary site were instead diverted to a "clone site", which hosts over 200 ads per page—far exceeding the 3-10 ads on the main site. This strategy significantly boosted Forbes' revenue at the cost of ad visibility and efficacy. Prominent companies like Microsoft, The Walt Disney Company, and Mercedes-Benz AG-Benz, as well as major agencies such as WPP and Omnicom Media Group, were among those misled. Or failed to see or didn't want to see? This incident, highlighted by The Wall Street Journal, again brings to light the shitty practices in digital advertising. What still surprises and frustrates me is that the companies that were misled are expected to have some checks and balance in place. Or are at least spending money in their tech stack to check this. It is so bad for the Ad landscape to continuously have these kinds of frauds. #Advertising #DigitalMarketing #Forbes #Transparency