Tag Archives: analytics

Common Sense Digital Ad Measurement

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Been too long since the last post but hopefully more to come!

Digital analytics and ad fraud expert Augustine Fou provides an overview of why and how to start upping your digital advertising. Especially handy is the approach to getting started with simple on/off tests in different markets.

Getting Started is Better than Not

Not perfect but excellent training wheels for harried digital marketers in need of a starting point for an experimental design approach.

See: Context, Correlation, Coincidence, Causation; and plan to spend time on the considerable wealth of articles on the Fou Analytics Practitioners blog.

Response to Openly Selling Counterfeit “bAds”

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Thanks to Dr. Augustine Fou for articulating in his latest post Openly Selling Counterfeit bAds, that clearly programmatic media has an ongoing IVT/NVT problem. In my experience, a toxic mix of weak technology, sloppy process and biased analytics are often to blame.

The bAds framework is clever, yet as presented it is Manichean: options are either a) $35 CPM “real pubs” or b) $3 CPM Cucci/Bluberry. The problem is that reality is more nuanced and this line of thinking risks “throwing the baby out with the bath water.”
To keep it simple there are three (at least) categories: 1) established media brands
2) legit mid-tier/indie “long-tail” sites and 3) clickbaity content farm type sites (“scammers”).

The subtle implication that advertisers “get what they pay for” might suggest to some that they are misguided, cheap and even penny-wise/pound-foolish. As uncomfortable truth as far too many certainly are! However, advertisers must manage the considerable digital ad execution risk, which in practice they do by preferring lower CPM programmatic media – if they can show it works. For some it does and for some others they are just going through the motions.

As an advertiser, that $35 CPM may or may not be overpriced. Value is in the eye of the beholder when it comes to programmatic advertising. Just because a given ad is being served up by a big brand “real pub” is not justification enough for paying 10x more especially since it can still be a bAd. Given the recent glitches that we’ve heard about (USAToday, Facebook, etc…) these “real pubs” have plenty of work to do on the basics let alone Fou Analytics-level housecleaning. Scarier is what we have not heard about!

While not an exact analog, in a prior life for a major retailer, we had occasion to compare performance of high CPM “real pubs” and a far lower CPM ad network (still around today). At the time we were piloting Adometry (pre-Google) to understand multi-touch attribution. Additionally, we leveraged an advanced integration between Adobe Analytics and the Doublclick ad server instance of our media agency (Digitas Chicago). It turned out that the “real pub” digital ad inventory (foisted upon us as part of TV buy) performed awfully compared to this ad network. As in, an order of magnitude difference in both traffic and ecommerce revenue (clickers plus viewthrough – even after calibrating for incrementality). As a second measure, we used algorithmic attribution (Adometry used Shapley value) where the story was even starker. We were able to see the actual contribution of various media relative to each other and the big brand media only made sense if the CPM rates could be renegotiated to a fraction of what they were getting.

With all that said, it seems dicey to blanket advocate that advertisers should spend more on $35 big media brands. Essentially, a “flight to quality” risk mitigation strategy. Still, it all comes down to nuance (again) while doing the hard work of defrauding programmatic media and defining upfront measurable objectives. Given the same ceteris paribus target audience and a choice of $35 CPM “real pubs” vs $3 CPM “TBD,” the choice is obvious.

Going beyond bAd/bAudience quality, most of these “real pubs” are arguably compromised by bContent across both news and entertainment categories. You might expect that bottom-of-the-barrel from “scammers” but the sad truth is that many big media are no better than mid-tier and in some ways are worse when it comes to “quality.” Big media news brands were built on years of journalistic integrity by being objective and presenting both sides of a story. That is a quaint relic of yesterday as most have sacrificed their brands at the partisan alter.

In any case, let’s hope that more real marketers do stand-up for better measurement.

And in the mean time, the question is: Do “real pubs” deserve a premium?

PS: Discerning digital marketers can up their game by immersing themselves in
Fou Analytic’s wealth of articles; make sure you have plenty of coffee or tea!

Part IV – Behavioral Data Trojan Horse

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4th Post in a 6-Part Series About the Behavioral Data Land Grab

Big G astutely recognized the latent value of the data being collected by a TMS several years ago when they released their free GTM platform. Such precious behavioral data could be used to power ad targeting business directly and in a more clandestine manner using algorithmic modeling. In so doing they brilliantly disrupted the tag management system niche…not unlike what happened with Web site analytics.

For those already using Big G’s free analytics for measurement, GTM was another way to get locked-in to the platform thus reinforcing the original decision. Even more valuable to Big G was that a free tag manager might entice other that were using Adobe Analytics, Webtrends and IBM Coremetrics enabling their data ingestion footprint a second chance at net new behavioral data. Not surprisingly, these days Adobe, IBM, Webtrends and even Matomo all offer companion tag management systems of their own.

Data Leakage by Design: Tracking Tags Disguise as Analytics

Free is Not Without Cost

The fact is that Big G’s new global site tag is not needed on Web sites for clickthrough measurement of digital campaigns for two reasons:

#1: Clients already have this tracked in their own enterprise Web site analytics systems and much better at that…

  • Clients can already thoroughly measure paid search and other click-based digital channels with their own enterprise Web site analytics platform that were purpose-built for measuring activity on the site and linking it to sources of traffic. By using query string parameters appended to clickthrough URLs , site analytics campaign tracking relies on either a single (CID, SID) parameter or multi-parameter (utm_) values added on to landing page URLs. This enable Web site analytics systems to associate site behavior like engagement or conversions with specific sources of incoming traffic, e.g. visit rate by channel, bounce rate by publisher, registrations by keywords, etc. The fact is that neither Big G Ads nor Search nor AdWords tracking can provide this level of detail. Such tracking is usually 1st party and fairly reliable.
  • For this reason, site analytics platforms are superior for measuring on-site engagement in granular interaction detail (downloads, exists, video watching, form abandonment) as well as having a comprehensive view of all the digital channels that are causing site visits (social, email, direct, organic search, referrals). Such a view allows for basic attribution of conversion events back to sources of traffic. For these reasons and not withstanding Big G Analytics, it is impossible for Big G to have as detailed information as Adobe Analytics, Matomo, Webtrends or IBM Digital Analytics.
  • What’s more, if Big G Analytics is not use then the advertiser’s Web site behavioral data is private and only for the client to use. That means, it cannot be repurposed or data mined to enhance somebody else’s ad campaigns elsewhere…including the advertiser’s competition. That is like unwittingly being in a de facto marketing co-op.
  • Advertiser’s media agencies should be using the enterprise Web site analytics platform of record’s data for performance optimization. Often times, this does not happen and for a variety of related reason’s advertiser’s end up with multiple site analytics systems. These seeds once planted tend to yield digital measurement chaos and costs.


#2: Big G is already keeping their own count albeit just not as accurate – effectively due to 3rd party cookie limitations. Big G’s own confidential and proprietary technical pdf document entitled, “Introducing the New DoubleClick Global Site Tag” states that prior (and in lieu of it), that there has always been a portion of conversions being reported using statistical modeling to estimate since Big G cannot measure traffic subject to 3rd party cookie blockers/deleters.

Why do Advertiser’s Need to Spend Time and Money to Help Big G Conversion Counting to Become More Accurate When Advertisers Already Have a Universe Count of Their Own?

Big G Search/Ads/AdWords cannot measure the universe of all of a Web site’s conversions using their 3rd party Floodlight tag that Web site analytics easily track using 1st party tracking cookie method.

Learn more:

Bottom-line: The reality is that the global site tag only improves Big G’s measurement and does not inherently benefit client-owned site analytics reporting at all. In practice and by Big G’s design, getting GTM in place will often create dysfunction by encouraging stakeholder interest in using Big G Analytics as well as they operational cost of maintaining two TMS and maybe two site analytics systems.

In Other News…

With Big G’s Chrome browser privacy virtue signaling making their walled garden walls even higher, it will be interesting to see if an how the FTC plays the next move. Also of note, is the IAB pushing their DigitTrust solution for other ad tech stack players.

Next Post in Series: Part V – Implications for Digital Marketers

Part III – Big G & Media Minion Maneuvers

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3rd Post in a 6-Part Series About the Behavioral Data Land Grab

Big G and many of their media minions are quick to point out that by using the new global site tag, they can then get around ITP’s 3rd party tracking limitations. The reason is that the GTM tag architecture tricks the user’s Web browser to treating it as 1st party by changing the context. The legacy DFA Floodlight tag cannot do this as it is a plain and simple 3rd party tracker in a 3rd party context. That DoubleClick impression cookie served up on ad delivery (on media publisher site) and then later checked for by the DFA Floodlight (on the advertisers site) is notorious enough at this point to be easily black-listed by blockers and anti-virus platforms.

Voted Most Likely to be Blocked, Deleted or Purged

Manufactured Crisis?

The global site tag (gtag.js) request often comes from the media agency team as a panicked rush to install the new code snippet – toute suite. The implication is that if these new global site tags are *not* used, then campaign measurement and therefore campaign performance will dramatically suffer or to become questionable. The implied benefit of the new global site tag is that at minimum, current paid search measurement accuracy will be better. What this really means is that Big G AdWords conversions (clickthough and (post-clickthrough) can be more accurately counted.

Most advertisers and their agencies will miss the nuance. They may not realize that simply showing more conversions in AdWords reports does not mean that Big G paid search actually caused more of them to happen. Questionable incrementality is a broader problem with paid search attribution and Big G’s walled garden of search performance data. That aside, showing the universe of conversions that an advertiser is already receiving more accurately only means that Big G’s AdWords reporting approaches the conversion tracking accuracy of site analytics like Adobe’s. Stated differently, Big G fixed their conversion tracking problem (caused by 3rd party blocking by ITP, plug-ins and anti-virus deleters) which before the global site tag relied on a predicted count. That is what has been reported out for years in AdWords. It is all about Big G more confidently taking greater credit for more of the conversions in their analytics system (not advertisers’).

Dropping the Ball: Who Do They Work for Anyway?

Instead of pushing back to Big G on behalf of their clients or suggesting alternative solutions, too many media agencies are not doing their diligence. They are pressuring clients to just go along with the request and merely parroting that Big G recommends this without much question. The implication is that the global site tag is needed for the media agency to measure better and there fore to do their very job. At the same time, most digital advertisers today do not want to provide their media agency with another reason for bad analytics and poor measurement. Meanwhile Apple ITP is conveniently blamed for the problem.

Judas Goat Leads the Sheep Up to Slaughter at Chicago Stockyards

Expected to be stewards of their client’s digital media business, this is an unabashed agency fail. All told, the new global tag combined with an expanded tag footprint on the Web site is a shifty way for Big G to also ingest more highly valuable behavioral data at the expense of digital advertisers. Even more unseemly is that this is a clever end-run to thwart advertisers that sought to limit Big G’s behavioral data access by not using their Analytics/Tag Manager products in the first place. Worse, the end result is dysfunction with analytics teams and hidden operational costs of a maintaining a redundant de facto tag management system.

Such conduct by those representing themselves as agents of marketers is disappointing. Unfortunately, it is consistent with the unflattering issues of undisclosed incentives and rebates from tech companies, media vendors and others that was revealed in the ANA Media Transparency Report of 2015. Digital advertiser clients themselves are not blameless: the buck needs to stop with them.

Next: Part IV – A Trojan Horse for Digital Marketers

Part II – Apple ITP: Convenient Scapegoat for Data Grab?

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Apple Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Protocol

In September of 2018, Apple released Safari 12 and updated its Intelligent Tracking Prevention 2.0 as a follow-up privacy enhancement for their customers. The newer ITP 2.0 update was even stricter than ITP 1.0 (released in September of 2017) going from expiring 3rd party tracking cookies in 24 hours to immediate expiration, i.e. effectively blocking all of them. The ad tech and ad network industry is rightfully concerned about this existential threat to their way of doing business. However, it should not have been a surprise to them.

For digital marketers and particularly advertisers, canny moves by Big G are taking advantage of the “crisis” situation. With long-time business tentacles deep and wide, the intrinsic value and security of advertisers’ campaign and Web site behavioral data should be of particular concern. Consider how data once captured can be leveraged by and between paid media business (search, display ad network), ad stack (ad server, DSP, DCO) and the site-side stack (search console, analytics, attribution, optimization and tag management).

Super Basic Overview of 3rd Party Cookie Tracking

To recap, 3rd party tracking cookies are the kind of cookies that are used by ad tech/networks all or in part for analytics and optimization. These cookies are different from the 1st party tracking cookies used by Web sites that are actually visited by users to authenticate and personalize the user experience (custom content), e.g.  ecommerce sites and social networks. By contrast, 3rd party cookies are delivered to the browser by another and different Web server from the Web site domain that the user is accessing, e.g. Ford ads on the New York Times Web site. This is often called cookie “context.” Under the auspices of convenience, AdWords leverages an internal “link” to Big G analytics and the Big G ad server (DoubleClick/DART for Agencies/DFA/DCM/Big G Ads).

To put the tracking impact of ITP 2.0 on analytics and targeting in perspective, as of the time of this writing, Safari 12 (ITP 2.0) represents about 15-20% of all Web site visits for a typical brand with the prior Safari 11 (ITP 1.0) representing another 15-20%. That puts a combined total of 35-40% of Web site visits. In terms of unique visitors to a Web site, this is probably more like 15-20% that are at risk of being miscounted, misreported and therefore highly in-actionable. Maciej Zawadinski one of the founders of Piwik/Matomo, wrote an informative and objective piece on ITP and tracking.

For advertisers, it is also likely that there is a very distinct sociodemographic skew to this hard-to-reach and highly perishable user segment. The group tends to be higher education, more male and higher income. Think along the lines of an oldie but a goodie: ComScore’s Natural Born Clickers from 2007 updated in 2009.

Big G’s Timing and Blaming the Victim

Although 3rd party cookie tracking has been getting worse over the years, there has been a paucity of published research on this far-reaching problem. Despite having the biggest advertiser and publisher ad server market shares, Big G has nothing to say about how reliable their 3rd party tracking cookie really is in practice. Publishers and agencies are left to figure it out themselves though most do not have the time or resources. If the industry has such research it is sequestered at an account-level or within a QA group as it is unflattering at best and devastating at worst.

In one published study, programmatic tech company Digilant observed in 2012 that 3rd party ad cookies degraded quickly: by 43% in the first seven days and by 75% within twenty-eight days. That should not be a surprise with ad networks, ad servers, other analytics/targeting platforms’ cookies increasingly being blocked, blacklisted and actively deleted by users.

Instead, on Monday October 17, 2017 Big G proclaimed through the now retired DoubleClick brand’s blog:

Blaming Apple Safari ITP while Implying that Advertiser Measurement Will Improve

The two options offered (click the above link and scroll down) are:

  1. Use the fake gtag.js (see:GTM disguised as a Floodlight)
  2. Avoid any such pretense and use the naked GTM with the easy linking capability

The instructions to expand their presence and put it up on *all* pages almost seem helpful.

GTM Presents As A Helpful Measurement Solution…But Helping Whom?

The inconvenient truth for many digital advertisers, their media agencies and 3rd party cookie-reliant ad servers/analytics as a result of the miscounting is that important digital metrics are severely compromised. Ad tech company Flashtalking regularly quantifies and publishes research on the inaccuracy of ad metrics can be that depend on 3rd party tracking cookies. Most recently, they bravely put user cookie rejection rate at 47%! For individual users they estimate 25% are rejecters. That means that when it comes to analytics and optimization, reach and viewthrough conversions are effectively overstated while frequency is understated. For more information, see Viewthrough.org’s recent post, 3rd Party Tracking Weakening, Viewthough Impacted.

What to Do About It?

Digital marketers do have options to improve both targeting and analytics without risking more Web site behavioral data leakage to hidden players in the ad tech stack. Fortunately for advertisers these days there is a new breed of ad server that is more transparent and uses more reliable tracking methods: Flashtalking, TrueEffect and possibly Sizmek. Are there others out there? Let TOTSB know!

Next up: Part III – Big G Media Minion Maneuvers

3rd Party Tracking Weakening, Viewthough Impacted

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A recent Webinar by Flashtalking, an ad serving/attribution technology company brought up the digital media analytics elephant in the room: 3rd party cookie tracking by display ad servers is unreliable and providing poor measurement to advertisers and their agencies.

The slow and steady decay of cookies is nothing new (Digilant 2012 Cookie Deletion Study), but seeing actual numbers that impact specific metrics is troubling. For digital advertising analytics the quantifiable impact on digital advertising campaigns is severely compromised for several key metrics.

Ad server metrics like reach, frequency and viewthrough conversions are way off!

Given the focus of Viewthrough.org, it is worth specifically focusing on the relevant findings of Flashtalking’s recent Cookie Rejection Index research that was shared during the Webinar.

By testing legacy and their proprietary methods together in the same campaign, Flashtalking is able to observe a strictly 3rd party cookie-based count and a machine fingerprinting (plus cookie) count, compare them and then determine and report on actual 3rd party cookie measurement efficacy. Discerning digital marketers need to check for themselves and benchmark their current tech stack’s accuracy.

The typical Viewthrough Conversion Process

For the regular research study, Flashtalking analyzes 25 of their client’s brands, Flashtalking analyzes tracking simultaneously using both cookies and their proprietary machine fingerprinting methodology called the ftrack ID, which probablistically establishes digital identity on a given device. Not perfect but a major step forward and better than legacy ad serving methods.

Machine Fingerprinting 101

Before diving into the affected metrics, a quick primer on machine fingerprinting will be helpful. This alternative method of digital identification arose because of the problems with cookies which require a Web server to place them via browser on a user’s machine and then to retrieve them. Better analytics solutions and ad networks have been using this method for years. Unlike cookies, machine fingerprinting tracking cannot be rejected, blocked or deleted. However, they are not as precise hence the term probablistic (likely).

For those unfamiliar with this passive method of tracking, visit and test a Web browser on Panopticlick from the Electronic Frontiers Foundation. Machine fingerprinting relies on the unique combination of browser characteristics, e.g. plug-ins and extensions that are shared with the Web server being accessed. Nothing new there.

Recent Web browser test results showing a sample of the fairly unique combination of traits that enable probalistic identification

Unreliable Ad Server and Attribution Metrics

The fact is that legacy ad servers, certain analytics and multi-touch attribution platforms that have not dealt with this problem are providing junk metrics. None of them are providing any transparency on how bad their count really is or trend data. As a result most digital marketers are blissfully unaware.

Unreliable and unstable 3rd Party Tracking Cookie impacts ad servers, analytics, attribution platforms, ad networks and more.

On the flip-side, many ad networks have solved for this problem as it immediately impacted their bottom-line. Worse campaign optimization on their side leads to worse advertiser results. That said, rarely is it mentioned or internal research about it shared with digital advertiser clients or their agencies. Most are usually only concerned with results and don’t ask questions.

For their part, Flashtalking’s research is revealing just how bad it is and found the following ad metrics seriously compromised:

  • Conversions are understated by an average of 40% (this includes viewthrough conversions and by extension viewthrough visits)
  • Reach is overstated by 97% meaning that ad server reporting are exaggerates
  • Frequency is understated by 41% meaning that ad server reporting misses more than half the repeat impressions
If digital Reach/Frequency matter…better look elsewhere for accurate metrics.

The above figures include desktop, mobile and tablet device types. Flashtalking also provided additional reporting that compares desktop to mobile showing the true story. Ad server performance for mobile platform metrics is significantly worse:

  • Conversions understatement from 11% to 79%, about 7x worse for mobile
  • Reach overstatement from 26% to 128%, about 5x worse for mobile
  • Frequency understatement from 20% to 50%, about 2.5x worse for mobile

The impact of the above should be a cause for concern for digital marketers seeking to understand display’s passive branding effects, multi-touch attribution and even ad viewability. Considering that many digital advertisers are not incrementality testing or calibrating viewthrough measurement the metrics from ad servers are almost worthless.

Learn more about Big G’s solution to this problem at Tip of the Spear Blog.

Part I – Keeping Big G Out of The Digital Cookie Jar

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Part 1 – Introduction

This will be a multi-part post about recent developments that should be of concern for serious digital marketers. In particular, large digital advertisers that use Adobe Analytics (or other non-Big G Analytics platforms) and whose media agencies (or internal digital media buying teams) also use Big G Ads/Search/AdWords beware.

The Problem

Apple’s most recent Safari release in September 2018, which effectively blocked all 3rd party tracking cookies is being blamed for what amounts to a clandestine behavioral data land grab by Big G. In going along with this charade, digital marketers everywhere risk the de facto relinquishment of digital measurement and customer behavioral data to others with different and not non-transparent interests that create a competitive disadvantage.

Through major brands’ own media agencies, Big G has been cannily pushing everyone to use a new kind of Web site tracking tag that circumvents Safari’s strict privacy features.  The new code snippet replaces the legacy DoubleClick Floodlight tags that have been historically appended the brand’s destination Web site on key actions, e.g. order thank you page. The loading of that page and associated 3rd party tags signal a successful “conversion” event for analytics and ad targeting optimization purposes.

Who Has the Behavioral Data?

Floodlight 101

The DoubleClick Floodlight tag was created as an adjunct to the agency ad server (a/k/a 3rd party ad server) which was initially developed to enable ad impression delivery in the user’s browser to be associated with later events on the advertiser’s Web sites. In this way, a kind of campaign measurement could be performed showing cause (ad delivery) and effect (purchase event). However, the method relies a 3rd party cookie from doubleclick.net set at time of ad delivery to be safe and secure in the user’s browser and recognized by the Floodlight tag when the user subsequently interacts on the advertiser Web site.

Additionally, the Floodlight tag has the capability to piggyback other tags from media vendors like ad networks so that they could also measure and optimize their campaigns in flight based on actual performance, e.g. order confirmation pages firing. Similarly, ad analytics uses include brand lift studies and multi-touch attribution. Not surprisingly, over the years Big G has shoved more and more back-end server-side functionality into the Floodlight tag to help their other businesses like AdWords, Bid Manager and Dynamic Creative Optimization.

The problem with the new code snippet is that the tag is no longer the kludgey Floodlight but the much more powerful Big G tag manager. The latter was engineered to sending data back to Big G faking 1st party even though it is not really (similar to Big G Analytics). Compounding the challenge for digital marketers is the aggressive recommendation to install the new GTM code snippet onto *all Web site pages* instead of just swapping out existing Floodlight tags.

The Bait and Switch

Within the new code snippet itself, note that the comment text still says “DoubleClick” but the actual server being called is not doubleclick.net anymore but is googletagmanager.com. Big G’s timing of the recent name change dropping the DoubleClick brand from everything is interesting and has further caused confusion with the site operations and ad operations team that work with these technologies.

Before: Legacy Floodlight code snippet
After: New global gtag.js code snippet

Major digital advertisers that are not already using Big G Analytics/Tag Manager are particularly susceptible to the false sense of urgency in this crafty switcheroo. Especially those from industries with limited digital competency. In the end, Big G gets better clickthrough conversion tracking for search and client-owned Web site analytics platforms like Adobe Analytics, Webtrends, IBM Digital Analytics or Matomo remain as is.

Clients should consider pushing back on what amounts to a digital behavioral data cookie grab.

COMING UP: Part II – Victim-blaming with Apple ITP.

Trouble in the Advertiser Ad Server Market

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It may be getting rough for the advertiser/agency ad server marketplace with recent developments squeezing viable independent alternatives to Big G. Digital marketers and their media agencies would do well to think through the impact on their ad tech stack instead of the usual.

Independent Ad Servers vs. Big G and Typical Agency Lassitude

These challengers (and others) could still be a worthwhile alternative to Big G’s near monopoly on advertiser/agency ad serving. With the heavy hand of GDPR and CCPA looming regulators are looking to score political points and have a real need to fund overstretched governments with fines.

The bad news is that Sizmek is entering bankruptcy proceedings which itself is a roll-up of many companies. Formerly known as MediaMind, it is made up of Pointroll, Eyewonder, Eyeblaster, RocketFuel/x+1, Peer 39, StrikeAd and others. From the outside, it looks like self-inflected wounds are the cause and not a problem with the quality of their technology products per se.

According to AdExchanger, Sizmek owes around $26MM to various ad exchanges/networks. Missed revenue targets on the tech-side at the same time that they were trying to consolidate operations is mentioned. It would not be the first time that a lack of operational savvy by the financiers caused problems. Just because combining a media business model and technology model works for the dominant player in the market does not mean it is a good strategy for challengers. Mashing up a challenger technology product company with an overglorified ad network is usually a bad idea.

TrueEffect does not seem to be making much progress and is rumored to be having trouble. That would be unfortunate as their unique and innovative approach first-party ad serving would improve measurement of KPIs like reach, frequency and viewthrough measurement. It is too bad that more advertiser’s and their agencies choose ad servers based on expedience without considering the hidden costs.

Next, there is Flashtalking with their nascent relationship with Adobe. In 2018, it was announced that the two would collaborate on integrating the Flashtalking ad server with the Adobe Media Optimizer DSP (demand side platform) which would together improve identity management in part of the ad stack. On the heels of Adobe Summit 2019, there is not much new to get excited about. For their part, Flashtalking brings a novel approach to identity management with their ad server leveraging probalistic machine fingerprinting methods to boost targeting and analytics efficacy. Limited reliance on 3rd party tracking cookies seems to be a good proxy for first-party browser tracking.

Managing Technology and Advertising Media Businesses

The Atlas ad server is history. In 2013, Baby G acquired the Atlas ad server technology from Microsoft (an early funder of Baby G) and then ran it into the ground. Briefly, there was potentially big funding around and it was all about people-based ad serving with an obvious identity management benefit. Alas, the towel was thrown in by Baby G in 2016. Riding two different horses is hard. Prior to Microsoft it was part of the aQuantive group which also included the DrivePM and the Razorfish agency. Microsoft also let the Atlas ad serving technology go to waste which is thought to be a me too move and also to prevent Big G from getting another DoubleClick.

Guess Who Has Your Web Site User’s Behavioral Data Went!

Meanwhile, it is all sunshine and rainbows in Mountain View. Big G continues to scam advertisers/site-owners for more data with the old DoubleClick Flooglight for Google Tag Manager switcheroo (more on this soon). Conveniently, they and their media agency lackeys blame Apple Safari ITP for the land grab under the auspices of: it is to improve measurement [theirs primarily it seems].

NEW! Guardian Joins TechCrunch, Motherboard Vice, CBS as Latest Digital Tracking Posers

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UPDATED 2/11/19

And the beat goes on…

The UK-based Guardian’s John Naughton joins a growing line of sanctimonious journalists carping about digital advertising tracking in, “The goal is to automate us’: welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism.” The article rehashes Shoshanna Zuboff’s tropey new book Surveillance Capitalism once again just as Motherboard did a couple of months back (mentioned earlier in this post). For an ex-Harvard Business School professor, the book sounds like a post-modern Das Kapital.

With at least 54 trackers at the time of this blog post Guardian joins many other digital ad tracking hipocrites. John Naughton is not likely working for free and Guardian is generating plenty of ad revenue as a result.  One can see clearly see the banner ad at the top of the page and in case you don’t read the article there are another 11 ad positions on the page! Last, Guardian harangues site visitors begging for donations with a zeal comparable to the NPR and PBS fund drives. The strategy must be working as digital revenue is up at Guardian Media Group.

Trackers revealed per Ghostery plug-in

Similar to Motherboard, it should be no surprise that although Facebook and Google are thoroughly trashed by the author, there are in fact, multiple trackers from each on the article Web page. Apparently it is OK for Guardian and Naughton to make a buck from digital ad targeting but Facebook and Google should not?

Guardian.com Diagram shows Rampant Trackers

A quick look at the tracker diagram for that article shows the hipocrisy of Guardian, who is really filling up at the ad tracking trough. As you can see John Naughton’s publishers are certainly not working for free. How long would John and the Guardian last if they took up Shoshanna Hoffman’s advice and swore-off digital advertising money?

Last, it is interesting that Guardian is hawking Shoshanna Zuboff’s book itself with a link at the bottom at the end of the page. The holier than thou Guardian doesn’t mention any interest in this book which makes the article itself smell alot like undisclosed advertorial.

Message to komrades John and Shoshanna, so-called surveillance capitalism isn’t the biggest problem. As with the other digital tracking Pharisees, government surveillance is minimized to just two sentences. For people pining about democracy, there is no mention of multiple government agencies already feasting on backdoor access and optimized APIs to more easily glom data on users. The kind of industry-government coziness that enables massive spying on the citizenry would have made King George III squeal with delight. Paul Revere, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would never have had a chance.

Free is Not Without Cost

While, I’m no fan of Big G[oogle] and Baby G[Facebook] advertising practices they do provide useful services to consumers for free that nobody is being forced to use. It is puzzling that some users (Saying No to Free-riders) expect to enjoy the benefits of these services without paying for them or providing information about themselves in exchange.

More worrisome should be the perversion of the free market (a/k/a crony capitalism) that is happening when regulations are foisted upon an industry. Red-tape raises cost of entry and helps incumbents entrench themselves creating monopolies, duopolies, etc… Basic economics explains that reducing the number of suppliers (shifting supply curve S to S1 to the left) while holding demand constant increases prices.

Not a big surprise but disappointing then that some of the biggest players are welcoming the rent-seeking opportunity to be regulated. Railroads, pharma, insurance and banking come to mind as high-margin and high-regulation industries.

Of course bureaucrats and politicians gain but that is a feature not a bug.

UPDATED 1/23/19

Natasha Lomas is the latest writer/journalist that sure likes to get a paycheck but bemoans advertising tracking and the ad tech players that make it all happen. Just another in a string of digital tracking hypocrites in the rather verbose and rambling, The case against behavioral advertising is stacking up over at TechCrunch.

Lomas’ actual premise is an inch deep, e.g. the Digiday reference about the
NY Times International says that they are “still doing private marketplace deals.” Clearly, missing the fact that PMPs use the same programmatic techniques just different ad buying methods: guaranteed placement directly from NY Times assisted by ad sales reps vs. open exchanges buying remnant ad inventory in real-time. Sorry, the facts got in the way of the story!

Here are more facts: Lomas and her editors might be interested learn that Ghostery counts a whopping 86 trackers on the article itself; the tracking network diagram found even more.

The case against poor quality business writing is really stacking up too!

TechCrunch TrackersTechCrunch Ghostery

UPDATED 12/4/18

Not to be outdone, comes the steaming hot chicken-little indigence of Motherboard Vice with, Targeted Advertising Is Ruining the Internet and Breaking the World with a whopping 62 trackers, almost 3 times the capitalists-of-convenience at CBS.

Here is their tracker map diagram, which is pretty impressive in the level complexity and likely degraded user experience. It shows how dependent on digital tracking Motherboard Vice is for ad targeting and measurement.

While reading the article and waiting for the call for Workers of the World to Unite rally-cry, I struggled to find a link to the privacy policy on the forever expanding page. An interesting technique that served endless content and more display ad banners as you scroll down.

Eventually, I found Motherboard Vice’s privacy policy explained here – pretty long and complicated as per usual. I did find a link to an article on FAZ.net promoting retired HBS academic Shoshanna Zuboff’s new book about so-called “surveillance capitalism“…which…wait for it…ironically sported 24 trackers of it’s own!

Meanwhile no mention of the NSA, CIA, DOD and FBI surveillance by CBS or Motherboard Vice. Maybe Shoshanna Zuboff’s next book will be: Surveillance Government – The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.

You can’t make this up. In many ways, Web media publishers with ad-supported business models brought this on themselves – see Saying No to Free-riders. None of the above Web sites are using the open source Matomo analytics or Pwiwk Pro tag management product which is big in the EU.

UPDATED 12/4/18

John Stossel recently did a story on “The Creepy Line” a movie that rails against tracking and specifically Big G and Baby G.

A quick look with Ghostery shows the Web site uses both! Google Analytics and Doubleclick tracking was observed. Facebook Advertising and Connect are being used to facilitate social media promotion of the movie – ironic, no? Not to mention links to Amazon.com to see the movie. Disclaimer this blog is a Google-free zone but we’re making an exception here.

Coincidentally, it appears that Peter Schweizer is one of CBS’ producers in NYC…interesting! No mention of government tracking or spying.

Meanwhile, the tracker network diagram reveals even more clandestine tracking (130 total ) than Ghostery; this is likely due to server-side piggybacking.

ORIGINAL POST: 11/19/18

Last week, CBS 60 Minutes broadcast “Your Data” aiming to scare everyone about online ad targeting. The outrage of the story was palpable. How dare Google (Big G) and Facebook (Baby G) track people and target ads to us?

In an irony too good to pass up, a quick look at CBSNews.com’s 60 Minutes Web site showed some 23 different trackers doing the exact same thing!

In the mislabeled but scary “Your Data” episode last week, the hapless Steve has little clue about which he speaks fawning over GDPR the whole time. BTW, how can it be “Your Data” when people voluntarily access somebody else’s Web server for all you can eat news, social media fun and search engine content? Magic bunnies don’t build these Web sites for free.

Alas, CBSNews.com’s Privacy Policy looks just like everybody else’s. Perhaps TV media is threatened. Or perhaps morally superior for forcing people to trade their time instead of their Web browsing behavior in exchange for free all-you-can-eat media.

So many ironies so little time…here you can see the CBSNews.com actually filling up themselves at Big G and baby G’s data trough. Traditional media trying to claw back advertising revenue they lost or journalism at work…hmmm.

If you find any more good ones please reach out to me via LinkedIN.

Response: Did Google Just Kill Independent Attribution?

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Response to Martin Kihn of Gartner’s piece at AdExchanger, Did Google Just Kill Independent Attribution?

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Interesting. Digital advertisers relying on those IDs for MTA sacrificed quality for expedience a long time ago. That cookie and anything relying on its stability is the poster-child for unreliable 3rd party tracking, i.e. bogus measurement and imprecise targeting.

#1: I’m glad you brought up trust which hopefully advertisers are paying attention to now in the post-ANA world. Best approach is also “to verify”.

#2: It is hard to believe that advertisers willingly uploading their data to ADS.

#3: Well-said. Some media agencies may be conflicted about this, while others are moving their clients away from the expedient choice.

#4: It should now become more clear: digital advertisers that chose expedience have lost the competitive advantage. Worse, they have been measuring and targeting with garbage data for years.

My recommendation to clients is to run from reliance on this dirty bird and find point solutions where they can leverage 1st party methods/do quality control and own their own destiny.

Stepping Over Data Dollars to Save Pennies