Don Marti

Tue 28 Jun 2016 05:14:59 AM PDT

Big opportunities in 2016

When a big industry is wrong about important things, that's an opportunity.

The first one is wrong because adfraud is priced in. Advertisers see a fraud-adjusted price, and intermediaries get paid, fraud or no fraud. The people who pay for adfraud are legit sites that compete with fraudulent ones, users who bear the costs of adfraud malware, and the copyright holders of work that shows up on ad-supported pirate sites. (The "publisher share" of online ad revenue includes undetected fraud.)

The second one is wrong because there are no "bad" ads. The same annoying and intrusive practices that get high response rates also provoke ad blocking.

Anyway, big opportunity. More on that later. For now, here's some background reading.

Mark Duffy: Copyranter: The biggest digital dumbasses of 2015

Ethan Zuckerman: Will 2016 be the year web advertisers realise we don’t want to be monitored?

Paul Muller, Adjust: Install fraud is threatening the app economy

BOB HOFFMAN: 5 Questions For The New Year

Jim Spanfeller: Opinion: The big lies of ad tech

Mikko: EIGHT AD FRAUD PREDICTIONS NOBODY IN ADTECH WANTS TO MAKE — part 1, EIGHT AD FRAUD PREDICTIONS NOBODY IN ADTECH WANTS TO MAKE — part 2

Dawn Chmielewski: How ‘Do Not Track’ Ended Up Going Nowhere

Ricardo Bilton: Digital publishers face a winter of discontent (via Nieman Lab)

Adam Kleinberg: Why Ad Tech Is the Worst Thing That Ever Happened to Advertising

kevinmarks: Paul Graham has accidentally explained everything wrong with Silicon Valley’s world view - Quartz

Top News & Analysis: Inside Yahoo's troubled advertising business

Violet Blue: You say advertising, I say block that malware

VB Staff: Digital advertising forecast for 2016: Brands cut back, agencies double down

Allison Schiff: The Consumer POV On Cross-Device Tracking: ‘No, Thanks’

Scripting News: It's time to care about the open web

Steven Englehardt: Do privacy studies help? A Retrospective look at Canvas Fingerprinting

Michael Eisenberg: 2016 Prediction!

David Chavern: Opinion: Ad blocking threatens democracy

Lewis DVorkin, Forbes Staff: Inside Forbes: Our Ad Block Test Stirs Up Emotions, Then Brings Learnings and New Data

Frédéric Filloux: Google’s AMP Poised To Take The Lead From Facebook’s And Apple’s Walled Gardens

James Warren: Newspaper bosses ‘paralyzed’ by change, clueless about paid content, says Steve Brill

Robinson Meyer: Will More Newspapers Go Nonprofit?

Lubomir Rintel: NetworkManger and tracking protection in Wi-Fi networks

Doc Searls: Rethinking John Wanamaker

Laura Hautala: You'd say 'no' to your Android phone, if only you could, study finds - CNET

José Sáenz: Whitelist: Permission Based Marketing for the Web

Cog Blog: Just Because We Can…

MediaPost.com: MediaDailyNews: Little Progress In War On Ad Fraud

Heather West: Prioritizing privacy: Good for business

Corey Layton: Podcast Pioneers: Where Audiences Choose to Listen to the Ads

Garett Sloane: What Apple’s iAd changes mean for the industry

Krux Digital: Data’s Role in Combatting Ad Blockers

Dave Carroll: One-Click Adblocking Peace Treaty

Matt Kapko: Why the ad industry will never win the war on ad blockers

Ben Thompson: The FANG Playbook (via Stratechery by Ben Thompson)

Digg Top Stories: The Secrets I Learned Writing Clickbait

Stephanie Hobson: Google Analytics, Privacy, and Event Tracking

Media Briefing TheMediaBriefing Analysis: Last chance to save US newspapers

BOB HOFFMAN: Advertising's Comedy Bitchfight

Cog Blog: The Advertiser Agency Battle Rumbles On

Erica Berger: The next generation of journalism students have no idea what they’re getting into

BOB HOFFMAN: Native Advertising - Just More Online Corruption

Andrea Peterson: The massive new privacy deal between U.S. and Europe, explained

Lindsay Rowntree: Failure to Act Against Ad Fraud is Equal to Supporting Cybercrime

Baekdal Plus: The Amazing Google And The Not So Amazing Ads

Rob Leathern: Advertising Needs to Become Harder to Buy

Rick Falkvinge: It doesn’t matter why data is collected: it only matters that it is

David Dayen: Eric Holder Makes Ads for Hillary Clinton While Making Deals for Corporate Clients

Stephen Kliff: Booting the bots: New botnet protections across our ads systems

Adrienne LaFrance: Facebook and the New Colonialism

Violet Blue: RIP: Adblock Plus

BOB HOFFMAN: Waste Not, Grow Not

The Earl Blog: Adblocking could allow news publishers to turn hate into opportunity

Media Briefing TheMediaBriefing Analysis: Guardian Media Group's David Pemsel: A paywall "would diminish our reach and influence around the world"

Cog Blog: Advertising Dies a Little

Dan Gillmor: Why Don’t Tech Reviews Discuss Gadget Security and Privacy?

Media Briefing TheMediaBriefing Analysis: The game has changed: Adblocking and audience consent

David Barton: Adblock users in their own words: what makes them tick?

BOB HOFFMAN: Why Online Ad Industry Can't Reform Itself

Cog Blog: Programming and Airtime Deals

TimKadlec.com: CPP: A Standardized Alternative to AMP

Ben Williams: Acceptable Ads explained: monetization

tony: Looking Back: Seven Years at Chartbeat

Scripting News: My open Instant Articles feed

Randy: Widespread XSS Vulnerabilities in Ad Network Code Affecting Top Tier Publishers, Retailers

www.metromodemedia.com: These Detroit-area journalists are breaking big stories...without the backing of major news outlets

Romain Gambier: Building Towards Value with Atlas

Bryan Clark: FCC drops the hammer on Verizon over ‘supercookie’ usage

Guardian readers and Tom Stevens: Why we use adblockers: 'We need to have more control over what we're exposed to'

Alexander Hanff: Whittingdale is wrong: it is advertisers who are destroying the digital economy

Mark Duffy: The lost art of the billboard

trottdave: WHO ELSE IS LISTENING IN?

Dan Goodin: Big-name sites hit by rash of malicious ads spreading crypto ransomware

sil: Reasons to not like ads

BOB HOFFMAN: 3 Things I Don't Hate

robbo97: Snake Oil: More Deceptive Ads That Revcontent Runs

SpiderLabs Blog from Trustwave: Angler Takes Malvertising to New Heights (via Ars Technica)

Yuyu Chen: Confessions of a programmatic vet: ‘It’s such a mess right now.’

Rob Leathern: Deception Funds Your Online News

Dave Carroll: Artisanal Adtech

Joshua Kopstein for Motherboard: Creepy Ad Company Says It Will Stop Eavesdropping With ‘Audio Beacons’

Hacker News: Thank you for ad blocking

Kate Kaye: Key Verizon Data Becomes Available to AOL Advertisers, Slowly

Ken Doctor: Newsonomics: In Southern California’s newspaper chaos, is anyone really speaking for the readers? (via Nieman Lab)

Lara O'Reilly: Adobe has figured out a clever way to track people as they switch between devices (ADBE)

BOB HOFFMAN: Advertising's Slow-Motion Suicide Continues

Jacob Hoffman-Andrews: Victory: Verizon Will Stop Tagging Customers for Tracking Without Consent

Jérôme Segura: A Look Into Malvertising Attacks Targeting The UK

Johnny Ryan: Four big ideas emerge from PageFair global stakeholder roundtable

Frédéric Filloux: Clickbait Obsession Devours Journalism

BOB HOFFMAN: Bullshitters Bullshitting Bullshitters

Maciej Ceglowski: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

PCMag.com: the Official John C. Dvorak RSS Feed: Why the Surveillance State Will Kill U.S. Software Sales

MediaPost | Garfield at Large: Fairy Dust

Yuyu Chen: How sponsored content drives more than 60 percent of The Atlantic’s ad revenue

Joshua Kopstein for Motherboard: Rise of Ad Blocking Is the Ad Industry's Fault, Says Outgoing FTC Commissioner

Martin Weigel: Fuck art. Let’s advertise (via Teeming)

Adam Broitman: Three Reasons Why Ad Blockers Are Good for Advertising

George Slefo: Ghostery Makes Its Ad Tech Diagnostic Maps More Accessible to Publishers, Vendors

Jerrid Grimm: The Subprime Banner Ad Crisis

@talktojimmer: How To Make Better Advertising and Advertising Better

Lara O'Reilly: 'BLATANTLY ILLEGAL': 17 newspapers slam ex-Mozilla CEO's new ad-blocking browser

Dan Gillmor: Journalists: Stop complaining about Facebook, and do something about it

Nelson Minar: Ad replacement is unethical

David Barton: Rights or Respect: the Ethics of Adblocking

Rob Leathern: Shitty ads cost iPhone users $8 billion a year

Dave Carroll: Co-Owning Our News Future

Joseph Lichterman: The Winnipeg Free Press’ bet on micropayments will generate about $100,000 in revenue this year

Jim Vande Hei: Escaping the Digital Media ‘Crap Trap’

Nick Heer: Ad Tech Is Completely Broken

Nick Heer: FTC to Crack Down on Cross-Browser Tracking

Jim: Bay Area News Group memo: ‘We will be eliminating a layer of valuable editing’

trottdave: WHY EXPERTS ARE PRECISELY, ACCURATELY WRONG

BlockAdBlock: About that claim that detecting Adblock may be illegal (via Nieman Lab)

Joseph Galarneau: Worst. Site. Ever. 1,665 tags on one page

AdExchanger: The Catch-22 Of Ad Fraud And Verification

Hacker News: Dark Patterns by the Boston Globe

David Barton: Procurement Could Play Vital Role in Stopping Adblocking

BlockAdBlock: Blocking Adblock without Javascript

Cog Blog: Principal-Based Media Buying – That Was Then, This Is Now

Josh: Yes, Popups Suck. Here’s Why I Won’t Be Taking Mine Down Anytime Soon

Yuyu Chen: Ad tech is having a premature midlife crisis

Marco.org: Apple’s actual role in podcasting: be careful what you wish for (via Stratechery by Ben Thompson)

Nick Bilogorskiy: Malvertising on Pace for a Record-Breaking Year

BlockAdBlock: Adblocking and its dangerous arguments – Part I

trottdave: ONE AT A TIME

Massimo: The problem with content

Lara O'Reilly: The main reason why people are not already using ad blockers should worry publishers

Steven Englehardt: The Princeton Web Census: a 1-million-site measurement and analysis of web privacy

Dan Gillmor: Why It’s So Funny That Republicans Are Upset With Facebook for “Censoring” News

Joseph Galarneau: Confessions of a tag hunter: Call for vendor transparency

Ethan: From disastrous decisions to decentralization: a mostly spontaneous talk for Data & Society

Sharona Coutts: Anti-Choice Groups Use Smartphone Surveillance to Target ‘Abortion-Minded Women’ During Clinic Visits

Melody Kramer: If ad tech is not sustainable, what can publishers do?

All NAA.org Updates: NAA Asks FTC to Investigate Unlawful Ad Blocking Practices

Elizabeth Dwoskin: Newspapers escalate their fight against ad blockers

Barb Palser: Relay Media Launches AMP Platform for Publishers

Tony Haile: The Facebook papers Part 4: What’s a publisher to do?

The PageFair Team: 2016 Mobile Adblocking Report (via The Ad Contrarian)

The Perks Are Great. Just Don’t Ask Us What We Do.

Dave Carroll: Awkward Conversation With Facebook

Cog Blog: A Mess Of Our Own Making

Laura Hazard Owen: Forbes has quit bugging (some) people about their adblockers

Aral Balkan: Introducing Better

Joseph Lichterman: Report: Ad tech (and the garbage #content it funds) is killing the web

Dave Carroll: Facebook’s Adgate

DCN: What New York Times President and CEO Mark Thompson had to say about ad blocking

Martin Shelton: How Can Newsrooms Not Be Creepy?

Hacker News: Fraudulent Advertising on Facebook

Marty Swant: ComScore Says People Prefer Ads in Podcasts Over Any Other Digital Medium (via Nieman Lab)

Lara O'Reilly: Bombshell report claims US ad agencies unethically pad their profits with secret rebate schemes (WPPGY, IPG, PUB, OMC, HAV)

Ben Thompson: The Future of Podcasting (via Nieman Lab)

Marco.org: Large Podcast Advertising Company Buys Large Proprietary Podcast Player (via Nieman Lab)

Jamie O'Donnell: WORLD’S LEADING AD AGENCIES AND MAJOR BRANDS ENDORSE TAG ANTI-PIRACY PLEDGE

Inti De Ceukelaire: Why you shouldn’t share links on Facebook

Mitch Stoltz: Newspapers’ Complaint to Consumer Agency Shouldn’t Lead to Bans on Privacy Software

Mikko: Interview with an Arbitrager: How to Make Money with Ad Fraud

Sean Blanchfield: The Dangers of Playing Cat and Mouse with Adblock

Lara O'Reilly: Ad tech company Criteo says its rival SteelHouse ran a 'counterfeit click fraud scheme' (CRTO)

BOB HOFFMAN: The Cons Of Silicon Valley

Garett Sloane: WTF are agency ‘preferred vendors?’

Doug Weaver: End of Days. (via Digital Content Next)

Tim Sullivan: The Case for Neck Tattoos, According to Economists (via NewCo Shift — Medium)

Matthew Green: What is Differential Privacy? (via Schneier on Security)

Jason Kint, CEO – DCN: Google and Facebook devour the ad and data pie. Scraps for everyone else. (via The Ad Contrarian)

Columbia Journalism Review: Local news isn't dead. We just need to stop killing it.

BOB HOFFMAN: Wrong Problem, Wrong Solution

Donal Kerr: The Hidden Ad Tech Gold Rush for Your Personal Data

BOB HOFFMAN: Sometimes, Even Bloggers Need To Shut Up

ASD: Link – The marketing truths we are all in danger of forgetting

quinwi02: Benchmarking Return on Ad Spend: Media Type and Brand Size Matter

Lara O'Reilly and Reuters: Adblock Plus' revenue model was just ruled illegal by a German court (SPR)

MediaPost | Online Publishing Insider: Finding The Answer In Search

Dan Goodin: Firm pays $950,000 penalty for using Wi-Fi signals to secretly track phone users (via Techrights)

Anne’s Blog: Translation from PR-speak to English of selected portions of “Perspectives on security research, consensus and W3C Process”