Is Publir Doing Ad Fraud? Let's see.

Wow, you guys. There's never a dull day around here. On Monday, Alex Kaplan from Media Matters for America tweeted out some new news —?which no fewer than 6 of you sent directly to me:

The news? TheDonald, a now-banned Reddit forum that found new life as its own independent forum, had recently started monetizing with ads. The forum had direct links to the J6 insurrection, making it as toxic to advertisers as 4Chan.

So the question is: how did they get into the advertising game?

The first thing I always look at for clues about a website's monetization partners is their ads.txt file. This tells us which ad exchanges and networks a website has authorized.

TheDonald's website is patriots.win. So their ads.txt file lives at patriots.win/ads.txt.

???? Do it with me: patriots.win/ads.txt

And wouldn't you know it. The first thing I see (other than RevContent —?that's a whole other story) is an ad network called Publir.

Hello, hello. ????????

It was the starting point I needed.

I'm reproducing my Twitter thread here —?because let me tell you there is a PLOT TWIST here you definitely want to stick around for.

Here's a closer look at those screenshots:

Don't worry, blowing these up for you:

Here's a closer look at that:

Wow. It really looks like Publir is packaging up and selling the entire RealClear media empire within the same advertising accounts as QAnon conspiracy theory rings.

It would mean these entities are all sharing ads, user data and more importantly: ad revenues.

All under a mislabeling scheme designed to never tip off an advertiser.

This is a developing story.

And indeed, this work is a team effort. I'm thankful to one of my followers for discovering that Lucianne(.)com appears to be running through the same IP as RealClearPolitics. Watttt? ??

The plot thickens.

If you want to keep up, follow me here on LinkedIn...But also sign up for BRANDED, the newsletter the advertising industry is terrified of. We'll publish our investigation there —?soon.