Redirection is the new black. According to Patrick Berlinquette, founder of the search engine marketing consulting firm Berlin SEM, Google conducted an experiment in meant to confront online radicalization. While the intent was benign, the methods of this digital madness are available to all. With redirection, marketers swerve your monetizable desperation. But we can also […]
Privacy
Common Problems Call for Comprehensive Solutions
Digital media is one of those inventions, like television, with the potential to change the world for the better. Instead, many digital spaces have become a cesspool, and a cesspool is an unhealthy place for marketers wanting to connect with future customers. Meet GARM Some of the world’s largest advertisers including Adidas, Diageo, Mars, Procter […]
The New Frontier In Privacy: Your Face
Agree or disagree? Communications technology, like all new technology, is neither good nor evil. I believe what we choose to do with technology is what matters. For instance, Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) can be used for the good of all, or it can be used by a draconian surveillance state to control a population. Last […]
Data Predators and Surveillance Capitalists Get “T Boned” at SouthBy
Legendary musician and music producer T Bone Burnett came to SXSW 2019 to slay digital demons. I highly recommend that you make some time to watch his keynote and/or read the text of his speech. It may shake you awake. There is so much to digest in Burnett’s speech that no recap is going to […]
Thanks To “Surveillance Capitalism,” The Googleplex Knows What You’ll Buy Next
Careful where and what you click. Every keystroke you make is evidence. If you’re not comfortable with being spied on every time you open a window, I highly suggest you spend some time with this brilliant article by John Naughton in The Guardian. I would say that it is an eye-opening exploration of our lost privacy, […]
Digital Advertising’s Frankenstein Is Wreaking Havoc and Damaging Democracy
“We need a digital economy where our data and our attention is not for sale to the highest bidding authoritarian or demagogue.” -Zeynep Tufekci What has the digital ad man wrought when the same algorithms companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon use to get you to click on ads are also used to organize your […]
Ask And You Shall Receive A Thoughtful Answer
Russian hackers are now meddling in the French election. French newspaper, Libération, is fighting back with a search engine staffed by real-life journalists. Libération with the help of J. Walter Thompson/Paris came up with the anti-hoax service CheckNews.fr, a search engine trading cold algorithms for journalists for three days before the French elections. In related […]
I Can’t Talk Right Now, I’m Not Driving
By now, you’ve heard just how important it is to connect all your devices to each other and to your car and home in an interlocking web of digital advertising vulnerability. This is where Connected Car by Harman can help. What would be a boring TV campaign is made less so by the acting of […]
Can Marketers Ever Publicly Embrace Privacy?
I always feel like I’m straddling both sides of the marketing equation. Because I’m a consumer, too, and often things hit me like a consumer, not an advertising copywriter. The increasing ability of marketers to collect reams of information is particularly concerning to me. Not because they can, but because they simply don’t know what […]
Google’s PRISM-Driven Doublespeak Needlessly Misleading
Some things are still sacred, but your privacy on corporate-owned communications networks is not, and never has been. This fact of digital life has been evident for years, but the recent revelation that the National Security Agency is working closely with leading tech companies, makes it crystal clear–anything you write, say, record, transfer etc. is […]
No One Was Hurt During The Making Of This Invasive Advertising
Would you stand up for a friend? No, seriously, if a friend called in the middle of the night and needed you to bail them out of a poker game gone wrong, would you rush over there with the ransom money to free your homey? Carlsberg drinkers would. Will Burns, CEO of Ideasicle loves the […]
People Love What They Love, Privacy Be Damned
Instagram’s move to “liberate” its users’ photos for advertising purposes was the act of a corporate buffoon. But it was all a big misunderstanding say the leaders of the company. Interestingly, there’s no misunderstanding that people still love Instagram regardless of the stand on privacy and painful awkwardness. In my piece on Instagram that appeared […]
