No point beating around the bush when it comes to yet another advertising network knocking on our door. This was a quick reply I just fired off, and I might as well put it on this blog so there’s another place I can copy it from, since I’m likely to call on it again and again. I’m sure we can’t be alone in online publishing to feel this way.
The original reply named the firms parenthetically in the last two scenarios but I’ve opted not to do that here. I have blogged about it, so a little hunt here will reveal who I’m talking about.
Thank you for reaching out and while I’ve no doubt you’re at a great company, we have a real problem adding any new ad network. The following pattern has played out over and over again in the last 25-plus years we have been online.
We add a network, so far so good.
The more networks we use, with their payment thresholds, the longer it takes for any one of them to reach the total, and the longer we wait for any money to come.
Add this to the fact we could get away with charging $75 CPM 25 years ago and only fractions of cents today, the thresholds take longer still to reach.
Other things usually happen as well:
We’re promised a high fill rate, even 100 per cent, and the reality is actually closer to 0 per cent and all we see are “filler” adsâif anything at all. Some just run blank units.
We wait so long for those thresholds to be reached that some of the networks actually close down in the interim and we never see our money!
In some cases, the networks change their own policies during the relationship and we get kicked off!
I think the problems behind all of this can be traced to Google, which has monopolized the space. It probably doesn’t help that we refuse to sign anything from Google as we have no desire to add to the coffers of a company that doesn’t pay its fair share of tax. Every email from Google Ad Manager is now rejected at server level.
If somehow [your firm] is different, I’d love to hear about you. The last two networks we added in 2019 and 2020, who assured us the pattern above would not play out, have again followed exactly the above scenario. We gave up on the one we added in 2019 and took them out of our rotation.
Hoping for good news in response.
I was absolutely shocked to learn this is how Gmail works.
If I read this correctly, #Google lets more than one person use a single email address (in this case, over 200!)? How daft! Why would they do that? pic.twitter.com/KtTO6PnDEI
As youâll read in the thread, this has been confirmed by other Gmail users.
That should rule out ever using Gmail for secure communications. Not that you should be using a service like that for anything important, but the fact is Gmail has become ubiquitous, and I believe a lot of people donât know any better.
Just imagine being able to receive some emails meant for your rival by signing up to an address that varies from it by a full stop or period.
Secondly, we’ve noticed a large amount of spam where we can trace (via Spamcop) the origins back to Gmail. Oftentimes they have Gmail reply addresses, as in the case of 419 scams (where they may use another ISP or email service with a “sacrificial” address to send them). Why would you risk being among that lot?
Add this to the massive list of shortcomings already detailed here and elsewhere and you have a totally unreliable platform that doesnât really give a toss. They didnât care when they removed my friendâs blog in 2009 and then obstructed any attempt to get it back, until a product manager became involved. They didnât care when their website blacklisting service libelled clean sites in 2013, telling people not to visit them or link to them. And they donât care now.
There really is no reason to use Gmail. Youâll risk your emails going to someone else with a similar address, and youâll be among the company of unethical actors. I can truly say that if Gmail werenât this ubiquitous, and used by so many friends, Iâd just set up a rule on our server and block the lot.
Almost three screens of apps, none of which require Google.
I had a good discussion on Twitter today with Peter Lambrechtsen, and if you want to have a peek, it’s here. He’s a really decent guy who makes some good points. But it does annoy me that my partner, whose phone is a stock standard one, with all the Google and Vodafone spyware, cannot run Ăber, either, and that it wasted half an hour of her life yesterday. Between us we’ve lost 90 minutes because of programs in two days that don’t do what they say on the tin.
I have several theories about this, and one of Peter’s suggestions was to get a new phoneâwhich is actually quite reasonable given what he knows about it, though not realistic for everyone.
Theory 1: the people who make these apps just have the latest gear, and to hell with anyone who owns a phone from 2017. (Silicon Valley is woke? Not with this attitude.)
Theory 2: the apps just aren’t tested.
Theory 3: the apps are developed by people who have little idea about how non-tech people use things.
We got on to rooting phones and how some apps detect this, and won’t function as a result.
I’d never have rooted mine if there wasn’t an easy manufacturer’s method of doing so, and if I could easily remove Google from it (services, search, Gmail, YouTube, Play, etc.). Nor would I have touched it had Meizu allowed us to install the Chinese operating system on to a western phone.
I wager that over 99 per cent of Android apps do not need Google servicesâI run plenty without any problemsâbut there’s less than 1 per cent that do, including Zoomy and Snapchat. I live without both, and, in fact, as the 2020s begin, I find less and less utility from a cellphone. So much for these devices somehow taking over our lives. You get to a point where they just aren’t interesting.
So why does the 1 per cent become so wedded to Google?
You’d think that app developers would believe in consumer choice and could see the writing on the wall. A generation ago, Microsoft’s bundling of Internet Explorer got them into hot water. More recently, the EU fined Google for violating their monopoly laws. People are waking up to the fact that Google is wielding monopoly power and it’s bad for society. Why contribute to it, when the other 99 per cent don’t?
If I build a website, I don’t say that you need to have used something else to browse it: there’s an agreed set of standards.
And I bet it’s the same for Android development, which is why there are now superior Chinese app stores, filled with stuff that doesn’t need Google.
We prefer open standards, thank you.
While these tech players are at it, let us choose whether we want Google’s spyware on our phonesâand if we don’t, let us banish it to hell without rooting them. (Next time, I’m just going to have to ask friends visiting Chinaâwhenever that will beâto get me my next phone, if I haven’t moved back to land lines by then. Just makes life easier.)
In the early days, banner advertising was pretty simple. By the turn of the century, we dealt with a couple of firms, Burst Media and Gorilla Nation, and we had a few buy direct. Money was good.
This is the pattern today if we choose to say yes to anyone representing an ad network.
I get an email, with, âHey, weâve got some great fill rates and CPMs!â
I quiz them, tell them that in the past weâve been disappointed. Basically, because each ad network has a payment threshold (and in Burstâs case they deduct money as a fee for paying you money), the more ad networks we serve in each ad spotâs rotation, the longer it takes to reach each networkâs threshold. And some networks donât even serve ads that we can see.
They say that that wonât happen, so I do the paperwork and we put the codes in.
Invariably we either see crap ads (gambling and click-bait, or worse: pop-ups, pop-unders, interstitials and entire page takeovers for either) or we see no ads, at least none thatâll pay.
Because we give people a chance we leave the codes there for a while, and that delays the payment thresholds just as predicted.
At the end of the day, itâs âThanks, but no thanks,â because no one really seems to honour their commitments when it comes to online advertising. With certain companies having monopoly or duopoly powers in this market, itâs led to depressed prices and a very high threshold for any new playersâand thatâs a bad thing for publishers. What a pity their home country lacks the bollocks to do something about it.
Every now and then they will feed through an advertisement from Google because of a contractual arrangement they have, and the ad isn’t clickableâbecause I guess no one at Google has figured out that that’s important. (Remember, this is the same company that didn’t know what significant American building is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC on Google Earth, and the way to deal with whistleblowers is allegedly to call the cops on them.)
We deal with one Scots firm and one Israeli firm these days, in the hope that not having American ad networks so dependent on, or affected by, a company with questionable ethics might help things just a little.
Martin Wolf, writing in the Financial Times, touches on a few points that resonate with my readings over the years.
He believes capitalism, as a system, is not a bad one, but it is bad when it is âriggedâ; and that Aristotle was indeed right (as history has since proved) that a sizeable middle class is necessary for the functioning of a democracy.
We know that the US, for instance, doesnât really do much about monopolies, having redefined them since the 1980s as essentially OK if no one gets charged more. Hence, Wolf, citing Prof Thomas Philipponâs The Great Reversal, notes that the spikes in M&A activity in the US has weakened competition. I should note that this isnât the province of âthe rightââPhilippon also shows that M&A activity reduced under Nixon.
I alluded to the lack of competition driving down innovation, but Wolf adds that it has driven up prices (so much for the USâs stance, since people are being charged more), and resulted in lower investment and lower productivity growth.
In line with some of my recent posts, Wolf says, âIn the past decade, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft combined have made over 400 acquisitions globally. Dominant companies should not be given a free hand to buy potential rivals. Such market and political power is unacceptable. A refurbishment of competition policy should start from the assumption that mergers and acquisitions need to be properly justified.â
History shows us that Big Techâs acquisitions have not been healthy to consumers, especially on the privacy front; they colluded to suppress wages before getting busted. In a serious case, according to one company, Google itself commits outright intellectual property theft: âGoogle would solicit a party to share with it highly confidential trade secrets under a non-disclosure agreement, conduct negotiations with the party, then terminate negotiations with the party professing a lack of interest in the partyâs technology, followed by the unlawful use of the partyâs trade secrets in its business.â (The case, Attia v. Google, is ongoing, I believe.) Their own Federal Trade Commission said Google âused anticompetitive tactics and abused its monopoly power in ways that harmed Internet users and rivals,â quoting the Murdoch Press. We see many undesirable patterns with other firms there exercising monopoly powers, some of which Iâve detailed on this blog, and so far, only Europe has had the cohones to slap Google with massive fines (in the milliards, since 2017), though other jurisdictions have begun to investigate.
As New Zealand seeks to reexamine its Commerce Act, we need to ensure that we donât merely parrot the US and UK approach.
Wolf also notes that inequality âundermines social mobility; weakens aggregate demand and slows economic growth.â The central point Iâve made before on Twitter: why would I want people to do poorly when those same people are potentially my customers? It seems to be good capitalism to ensure thereâs a healthy base of consumers.
Iâve discovered that the newer the Instagram, the buggier it is. Weâve already seen that it canât cope with video if you use Android 7 (a great way to reduce video bandwidth), and, earlier this year, filters do not work.
I downgraded to version 59 till, last week, Instagram began deleting direct messages as its way to force me to upgrade. Neither versions 119 or 120 are stable, and are about as reliable as one of Boris Johnsonâs marriages, although they have fixed the filter problem.
Neither version has an alignment grid to aid you to adjust an image so itâs square, even though Instagramâs own documentation says it remains present. Presently, only Tyler Henry and other psychics can see the grid:
I imagine this is Googleâs way of saving on bandwidth and it is utterly successful for them as nothing is ever transmitted.
The ZIPping process took probably 15â20 minutes a go.
A comparable service like Wetransfer or Smash just, well, transfers, in less than the time Google Drive takes to archive a bunch of files.
I also notice that Google Drive frequently only sends me a single image when the sender intends to send a whole bunch. Thereâs no age discrimination here: both an older friend and colleague and a young interviewee both had this happen in October when trying to send to me. It is, I suspect, all to do with an interface that hasnât been tested, or is buggy.
Basically: Google Drive does not work for either the sender or the recipient.
This morning a friend and colleague tried to send me more files using this godawful service, and this time, Google Drive at least gave me a sign-on prompt. Even though I was already signed on. Not that that does anything: you never, ever log in. However, for once, the files he tried to send me actually did come down in the background.
I should note that for these Google Drive exercises, I use a fresh browser (Opera) with no plug-ins or blocked cookies: this is the browser I use where I allow tracking and all the invasiveness Google likes to do to people. Now that it has begun grabbing Americansâ medical records in 21 states without patient consent in something called ‘Project Nightingale’ (thank you, Murdoch Press, for consistently having the guts to report on Google), weâre in a new era of intrusiveness. (Iâm waiting for the time when most Americans wonât care that Google, a monopoly, has their medical records, after the initial outcry. No one seems to care about the surveillance US Big Tech does on us, which puts the KGB and Stasi to shame.)
Looking at Googleâs own help forums, it doesnât matter what browser you use: even Chrome doesnât work with Drive downloads in some cases.
The lesson is: stop using Google Drive for file transfers, as Smash does a better job.
Or, better yet, stop using Google. Get a Google-free phone, maybe even one from Huawei.
Meanwhile, I see WordPress’s Jetpack plug-in did this to my blog today without any intervention from me. I imagine it did an automatic update, which it was not set to do.
Thereâs untested software all over the place, ignoring your settings because it thinks it knows better. News flash, folks, your programs donât know better.
A great way for one tech company to get rid of criticisms of another tech company for a few hours, I guess, harming its ranking in the process. Google itself has done it before.
Farewell, Jetpack. Other than the stats and the phone-friendly skin, I never needed you. I’m sure there are alternatives that don’t wipe out my entire blog.
People are waking up to the fact that online advertising isnât what itâs cracked up to be.
Last month, Bob Hoffmanâs excellent The Ad Contrariannewsletter noted, âI believe the marketing industry has pissed away hundreds of billions of dollars on digital fairy tales and ad fraud over the past 10 years (in fact, Iâm writing a book about it.) If I am right, and if the article in question is correct, we are in the midst of a business delusion unmatched in all of history.â He linked to an article by Jesse Frederik and Mauritz Martin (also sent to me by another colleague), entitled âThe new dot com bubble is here: itâs called online advertisingâ in The Correspondent. In it, they cast doubt over the effectiveness of online ads, hidden behind buzzwords and the selection effect. If I understand the latter correctly, it means that people who are already predisposed to your offering are more likely to click on your ads, so the ads arenât actually netting you new audiences.
Hereâs the example Frederik and Martin give:
Picture this. Luigiâs Pizzeria hires three teenagers to hand out coupons to passersby. After a few weeks of flyering, one of the three turns out to be a marketing genius. Customers keep showing up with coupons distributed by this particular kid. The other two canât make any sense of it: how does he do it? When they ask him, he explains: âI stand in the waiting area of the pizzeria.â
The summary is that despite these companies claiming thereâs a correlation between advertising with them and some result, the truth is that no one actually knows.
And the con is being perpetuated by the biggest names in the business.
As Hoffman noted at the end of October:
A few decades ago the advertising industry decided they couldn’t trust the numbers they were being given by media. The result was the rise of third-party research, ratings, and auditing organizations.
But there are still a few companies that refuse to allow independent, third-party auditing of their numbers.
No surprises there. Iâve already talked about Facebookâs audience estimates having no relationship with the actual population, so we know they’re bogus.
And, I imagine, they partly get away with it because of their scale. One result of the American economic orthodoxy these days is that monopolies are welcomeâitâs the neoliberal school of thinking. Now, I went through law school being taught the Commerce Act 1986 and the Trade Practices Act 1974 over in Australia, and some US antitrust legislation. I was given all the economic arguments on why monopolies are bad, including the starvation of innovation in their sector.
Roger McNamee put me right there in Zucked, essentially informing me that what I learned isnât current practice in the US. And that is worrisome at the least.
It does mean, in places like Europe which havenât bought into this model, and who still have balls (as well as evidence), theyâre happy to go after Google over their monopoly. And since our anti-monopoly legislation is still intact, and one hopes that we donât suddenly change tack (since I know the Commerce Act is under review), we should fight those monopoly effects that Big Tech has in our country.
What happens to monopolies? Well, if past behaviour is any indication, they can get broken up. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is simply recounting American history when she suggests that thatâs what Facebook, Google and Amazon should endure. There was a time when Republicans and Democrats would have been united on this prospect, given the trusts that gave rise to their Sherman Act in 1890, protecting the public from market failures like these. Even a generation ago, theyâd never have allowed companies to get this influential.
Also a generation ago, we wouldnât swallow the BS an advertising platform gave us without something to back it up. Right now, it seems we donât have anythingâand the industry is beginning to cry foul.
My complaints about Google over the yearsâand the battles Iâve had with them between 2009 and 2014âare a matter of record on this blog. It appears that Google has been making enemies who are much more important than me, and in this blog post I donât mean the European Union, who found that the big G had been abusing its monopoly powers by giving its own properties priority placement in its own search results. (The EU, incidentally, had the balls to fine Google âŹ2,420 million, or 2·5 per cent of Googleâs revenues, unlike various US statesâ attorneys-general a few years ago, who hit them with a $17 million bill, or four hoursâ income for Google.)
Itâs Jon von Tetzchner, the co-founder and CEO of Vivaldi, who blogged on Monday how Google hasnât been able to âresist the misuse of power.â
Von Tetzchner was formerly at Opera, so he has had a lot of time in the tech world. Opera has been around longer than Google, and it was the first browser to incorporate Google search.
As youâve read over the years, Iâve reported on Googleâs privacy breaches, its false accusations of malware on our sites, its favouring big sites over little ones in News, and (second-hand) the hacking of Iphones to gather user data. Google tax-dodging, meanwhile, has been reported elsewhere.
It appears Google suspended Vivaldiâs Adwords campaigns without warning, and the timing is very suspicious.
Right after von Tetzchnerâs thoughts on Googleâs data-gathering were published in Wired, all of Vivaldiâs Google Adwords campaigns were suspended, and Googleâs explanations were vague, unreasonable and contradictory.
Recently there were also revelations that Google had pressured a think-tank to fire someone critical of the company, according to The New York Times. Barry Lynn, ousted from the New America Foundation for praising the EUâs fine, accused the Foundation for placing Googleâs money (it donates millions) ahead of its own integrity. Google denies the charge. Heâs since set up Citizens Against Monopoly.
Itâs taken over half a decade for certain quarters to wake up to some of the things Iâve been warning people about. Not that long ago, the press was still praising Google Plus as a Facebook-killer, something I noted from the beginning would be a bad idea. It seems the EUâs courage in fining Google has been the turning point in forcing some to open their eyes. Until then, people were all too willing to drink the Google Kool-Aid.
And we should be aware of what powerful companies like Google are doing.
Two decades ago, my colleague Wally Olins wrote Trading Identities: Why Countries and Companies Are Taking on Each Otherâs Roles. There, he noted that corporations were adopting behaviours of nations and vice versa. Companies needed to get more involved in social responsibility as they became more powerful. We are in an era where there are powerful companies that exert massive influences over our lives, yet they are so dominant that they donât really care whether they are seen as a caring player or not. Google clearly doesnât in its pettiness over allegedly targeting Vivaldi, and Facebook doesnât as it gathers data and falsely accuses its own users of having malware on their machines.
On September 1, my colleague Euan Semple wrote, âAs tools and services provided by companies such as Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon become key parts of the infrastructure of our lives they, and their respective Chief Executives, exert increasing influence on society.
âHow we see ourselves individually and collectively is shaped by their products. Our ability to do things is in our hands but their control. How we educate ourselves and understand the world is steered by them. How we stay healthy, get from one place to another, and even feed and clothe ourselves is each day more dependent on them.
âWe used to rely on our governments to ensure the provision of these critical aspects of our lives. Our governments are out of their depth and floundering.
âAre we transitioning from the nation state to some other way of maintaining and supporting our societies? How do we feel about this? Is it inevitable? Could we stop it even if we wanted?â
The last paragraph takes us beyond the scope of this blog post, but we should be as critical of these companies as we are of our (and othersâ) governments, and, the European Commission excepting, I donât think weâre taking their actions quite seriously enough.
Above: Brave Bison’s predecessor, Rightster, left much to be desired in how it dealt with publishers, while investment commentators had concerns, too.
Twenty-sixteen had some strange developments on the publishing front.
First, we noticed Alexa rankings for a lot of sites changed. Facebook itself went from second to third, where it has stayed. Our own sites dropped as well, across the board, even though our own stats showed that traffic was pretty much where it was. In Autocadeâs case, it was rising quickly.
We checked, and Alexa had announced that it had increased its panel again in 2016. There was an announcement about this in 2014, but things improved even more greatly during the last Gregorian calendar year, specifically in April. (April 2016, it seems, was a huge month of change: read on.) This means Alexa began sampling more people to get a more accurate picture. Given that Facebook fell as well as us, then we drew the conclusion that the new panel must include audiences in China and other non-Anglophone places. It makes sense: Alexa is a global service and should take global data points. Never mind that weâve suffered as a result, we actually agree with this approach. And weâre taking steps in 2017 to look at capturing extra traffic with our content.
Alexa, when we approached them, said it could not comment about the origins of the panellists. Again, fair enough. Weâve made an educated guess and will work accordingly.
Secondly, there were two ad networks whose advertising disappeared off our sites. The first, Gorilla Nation, started dropping off long before 2016. In 2015, we asked why and were asked to fill out some form relating to Google ads. Anyone whoâs followed this blog will know why that was unpalatable to usâand we want to make sure our readers donât fall victim to Googleâs snooping, either. Iâm not saying that Google ads donât appear at allâitâs the largest advertising network in the world, and its tentacles are everywhereâbut if I can avoid opening our properties up to Google willingly, then Iâll do so.
Itâs a shame because weâve worked exceedingly well with Gorilla Nation and found them very professional.
We have, sadly, entered an era whereâas found by my friend and colleague Bill Shepherdâonline advertising is controlled by a duopoly. In The New York Times, April 18, 2016 (italics added): âAdvertisers adjusted spending accordingly. In the first quarter of 2016, 85 cents of every new dollar spent in online advertising will go to Google or Facebook, said Brian Nowak, a Morgan Stanley analyst.â I donât think this is fair, as theyâre not the ones generating the content. Google has also managed to game services like Adblock Plus: theyâve paid for their ads not to be blocked. (Better has more information on why certain ad blockers are ineffective.) Itâs not difficult to see why native advertising has increased, and this is generally more favourable to the publisher. In 2017, itâs time to build up the advertising side again: two years ago we already saw quarters where online overtook print in terms of ad revenue.
Burst Media’s ads also disappeared, and we had been working with them since 1998. Now called Rhythm One, they responded, âWe recently migrated to a new platform and your account was flagged by an automated process as part of that. All that being saidâwe can absolutely get you live again.â That was April. I added one of their team to Skype, as requested, but we never connectedâthe helpful staff member wasnât around when I called in. Again, a bit of a shame. As I wrote this blog post, I sent another message just to see if we could deal with the matter via email rather than real-time on Skype.
At least this wasnât a unilateral cessation of a business arrangement, which Rightster sprung on us without notice in April. Rightster’s Christos Constantinou wrote, âIt is with regret that we inform you that from yesterday we ceased providing video content services to your account.â This wasnât the first change Rightster sprung on usâits code had changed in the past, leaving big gaps in our online layoutsâand soon after, everyone there clammed up, despite an initial email from another Rightster staffer that feigned surprise at what had happened. Mr Constantinou never picked up phone calls made since that point, and we couldnât get an answer out of them. No breaches of their terms and conditions were ever made by us.
We were only interested in a small handful of their video sources anyway, all of whom exist on other platforms, so one would have thought that it was to Rightsterâs advantage to continue working with a well respected brand (Lucire). A bit of digging discovered that the firm was not in good shape: a pre-tax loss in the first half of 2015 of ÂŁ11·5 million, with shares trading in October of that year at 10·50p per share, down from its float price of 60p. That year, it was forecast by Share Prophets that things would only get worse for the firm, and they were proved right within months. Not long after ceasing to work with us (and presumably others), Rightster became Brave Bison Group, restructured, and became a âsocial video broadcasterâ, but it was still burning cash (to the tune of ÂŁ1·3 million, according to the same website in July 2016).
Gorilla Nation and Burstâs slots have largely been replaced by other networks as well as ads secured in-house, while Rightster effectively did us a favour, though its opaqueness didnât help. In fact, when they didnât answer questions, it was only natural to surf online to investigate what was going on. Initially, there was some negative stuff about Burst, though my concerns were put to rest when they emailed me back. With Rightster, there was no such solace: finding all the news about the firm being a lemon confirmed to me that we were actually very lucky to have them farewell us.
We revived an old player that we used, through Springboard, itself linked to Gorilla Nation, so weâre still serving advertising from them, just in a different form. Video content has not vanished from the Lucire sites, for those who are interested in it.
How a company behaves can be linked to how well it ultimately performs, and what itâs worth. Given our treatment by Rightster, it wasnât that surprising to learn that something was rotten in Denmark (or London). Maybe that first staff member was genuinely surprised, with employees not being told about their company running out of money. And unless things have truly changed within, it could well continue to function dysfunctionally, which will give those AIM columnists more ammunition.
