OPINION: The downfall of adtech means the trust economy is here | Richard Jones, Cheetah Digital via.Hwang argues that the middleman companies that make money between brands and publishers make lots of money by keeping everything vague. Much of the book explores claims that advertising targeted to individuals is no more and perhaps less effective for brands than old-fashioned contextual, mass-market advertising. Hwang writes that “the disclosure mandate will need teeth.” He suggests: “One might be excluded from selling advertising inventory across certain marketplaces or be clearly marked as a weller with a bad record.” Such an institution should research the machinery of programmatic advertising, “shedding light on previously opaque and murky elements and putting policy around the marketplace on firmer footing.”
“The space lacks a robust, independent institution to act as a counterweight to objectively investigate industry claims and conduct ongoing experimentation to test the health of the marketplace,” Hwang writes.
Their key aims should be broad disclosure. Securities and Exchange Commission, and industry self study. Programmatic online advertising comprises a “massive global economy of fraud,” writes Hwang, calling for a combination of government scrutiny, similar to the U.S. “It was, in sort, the same set of elements present in programmatic advertising: A potent blend of market opacity, toxic assets and conflicted players that inflates an enormous bubble in securities, which eventually burst to catastrophic effect.” The key problem, he writes, is arbitrage practices and opacity of both, “a key precondition for market failure.” He also draws parallels to the stock-exchange excess that provoked the crash and 1930s Depression. Hwang now works at the Berkman-Klein Center at Harvard Law School and at the MIT Media Lab. BOOK: Hwang’s “Subprime Attention Crisis” says programmatic advertising is a fraud | Reviewed by Danny Crichton,.“Algorithmic trading makes it challenging to assess where ads end up and who sees them.” “Undermined by visibility problems, indifference, and ad blocking, online advertising overall is increasingly subprime,” writes Tim Hwang in “ Subprime Attention Crisis,” published this month. It calls for an independent institution as a fix. 2008 financial meltdown and the way the Internet’s dominant advertising-technology system works. REGISTER: Identity, Advertising and Future of JournalismĮx-Googler’s book seeks “independent institution” with teeth to curb opacity and fraud in web advertisingĪn attorney and former Google executive’s new book draws parallels between the way bad mortgages were collateralized to spark the U.S.