Fire this executive and his agency now. Why? "see Fou yourself"
(the image above is AI generated, by Midjourney; it's not a real person or agency executive.)
Yesterday, I wrote The best way to overcome FOFO is to "see Fou yourself"
One of the first comments that came in was from Mark Stouse Quoting Mark "I had an illuminating exchange with a digital advertising leader recently in which fraud loss came up. He was adamant that it was a non-factor these days and not worth the trouble to parse. I could tell that there was something else going on.
Later, at a dinner, he was somewhat in his cups when the topic popped up again. “Look, Mark, the reality is that whatever fraud is present is making me look good. Yeah, it’s wasting my clients money, but how much is that, really?” I said, “shouldn’t you look into that a bit?” He looked at me and said, “if I look into it and it’s bad, I look bad and the agency looks bad. If I just keep going the way we’re going, it’s going to be fine. More expensive for my client maybe, but fine.”
This exchange sat on my shoulders for a week. It explains so much."
Think about the above for a minute. How long before the advertiser/client finds out that this agency executive, and the agency, have not been good stewards of their ad dollars. The agency was spending their clients' budgets and the brand advertiser was unwittingly funding terrorism, disinformation, or worse, yeah far worse (see the following section).
Using legacy verification vendors to cover up fraud and brand safety issues
The agency was actively covering up the fraud and brand safety issues by using legacy verification vendors that constantly, and incorrectly, reported low fraud and brand safety issues. But yet, the following examples of the failures of these vendors to do basic detection keep happening -- horrific brand safety failures from legacy vendors:
and older examples of the failures of their tech
2023 - https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-violated-its-standards-in-ad-deals-research-finds-3e24e041
领英推荐
"Incentive programs" are just "kick-back schemes"
As revealed this week in the anti-trust trial against Google, "Google planned to spend hundreds of millions of dollars incentivizing agencies to purchase certain types of its media. The program gave agencies discounts, special perks like third-party research, and cash back for agreeing to buy certain media from Google."
"Incentive programs like those outlined in Google’s filing are common among media companies, said a media auditing source. But they can be controversial, especially if they are employed by agencies that aren’t transparent with their clients about the deals. The risk comes from agencies recommending media because they were paid to do so, and not because it was in the client’s best interest." Source: https://www.adweek.com/programmatic/google-pay-agencies-sway-media-buys-antitrust-lawsuit/
Google's not the only one doing this. Kick-back schemes are common practice and they are well-documented over the years -- i.e. adtech companies giving kickbacks to agencies to foist their useless tech -- i.e. latest shiny objects, remember blockchain? -- on clients.
Other abuses and conflicts of interest like principal trading
In 2016, the Association of National Advertisers published their "Media Transparency" Report. https://www.ana.net/content/show/id/industry-initiative-recommendations-k2 The findings exposed:
The media agencies were buying media that generated the most profit for the agency instead of acting as "agents" and buying the media that was in the best interest of the advertiser/client.
So what?
Agencies, don't be the agency example mentioned above. You'll be found out, and you'll be fired. Better to "find out" -- i.e. "see Fou yourself" -- before the client "finds out" - The best way to overcome FOFO is to "see Fou yourself"
Advertisers, ask harder questions, specifically, ask your media agency to pull a placement report showing more than the top 10 rows, and showing the eCPM "effective CPM" that they paid for the media they bought for you. You know what CPM you paid to the agency. The CPM they paid for the media they purchased for you should be roughly the same. If there's some giant discrepancy (like you paid $15 CPM for display ads, but the agency paid $0.25 eCPM for the media) something is wrong.
If you're not ready to do the above, at the very least use FouAnalytics to check the campaigns that are run by the agency. There may be more ad fraud in the campaigns than you've been told. And there may be other issues like ads running in the overnight hours (forgot to set day parting), ads blown out by 2am (forgot to set pacing), or thousands of ads shown to the same user (forgot to set frequency caps), etc.
Ad-Fraud Investigator & Media Expert, member of Digital Forensic Research Lab cohort "Digital Sherlocks" - Adding some fun when asking unexpected questions you were not prepared to hear
5 个月I can confirm this 100%. Feedbacks like: “you're right, but what if the customer demands refunds” or “there are no problems, and if there are, we'll solve them bilaterally” or “you think we've been duped for years? That's bad, but we don't want to wake sleeping dogs” or ‘we don't want to jeopardize the good cooperation aka dinners, parties etc.’... Investors and shareholders of these companies who have been defrauded should actually be given anonymous data and shown how they lose money year after year.
love this
Managing Partner at Wizard of Ads Online
6 个月Wow! That's just insane. The truth will set you free. ;)
Digital Marketing Consultant, "ad fraudless" minded.
6 个月Things have to be shaken up for good as integrity in business must prevail!
Should have Played Quidditch for England
6 个月Shared on X