Within the span of 24 hours, the following were posted:

1) Ari Lewine, TripleLift Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer wrote "Ads create a free internet. Ads enable capitalism to function. Ads fuel a functioning democracy... All these things are true. People really like the internet, democracy, and capitalism. But not enough to appreciate ads."

2) Martin Kihn SVP Strategy, Marketing Cloud at Salesforce wrote "The haters are totally wrong about advertising. Here’s why." For the rest of the sponsored article (paid to be placed on The Drum) Martin makes a complete non-argument by saying digital advertising must be fine because advertisers are spending billions on it, and digital ad fraud must be low because advertisers are paying millions for Moat, IAS, and White Ops (now Human) for fraud detection services.

I could end this post right here and let you judge for yourself. But I won't (stop). Which side of this line in the sand will you end up on?

This is not a case of "it depends" or "it's not as black and white as that."

We are already witnessing actual harms to democracy and civil society, not caused by digital ads, but by the dollars that should have gone to digital advertising but instead were siphoned off by bad actors to fund disinformation, like ad fraud siphons ad budgets into the pockets of criminals.

This is how I responded to Ari's post:

"Incredible conceit.

Advertising HELPED to create the free internet, but it is not the only cause of it. Some folks publish quality content for free because they want to, not for the purpose of getting ad revenue. Don't neglect these long tail quality content creators. Recent data from @deepsee.io shows that only 11% of "long-tail sites" even carry ads.

So it's a myth that ad tech bros have been perpetuating that advertisers can reach "at-scale" audiences by showing ads on millions of long tail sites. What is actually in the long tail are millions of fake sites or sites made for ad fraud, which use 100% bot traffic.

Note that the bots are good enough to evade IAS, DoubleVerify, Moat, and White Ops detection, so they report fraud is low. And bots click on the ads more than humans so marketers think their ads are working well. See: Marketers Should Ween Themselves From "The Long Tail"

Ads DO NOT "enable capitalism to function." Capitalism was around far longer than advertising, let alone digital ads. No further commentary is necessary due to the absurdity of claiming that digital ads enable capitalism to function. Wha?

Ads DO NOT "fuel a functioning democracy" that was a complete and utter non-sequitur. Ads have, however, funded disinformation outlets and the negative impacts on democracy have already been documented. Over the years, we have documented examples of piracy sites making money from digital advertising; this enables them to continue because those sites are free to the humans that visit.

In 2013, ad-supported piracy was already in the hundreds of millions of dollars; today, digital ad dollars support a "multi-billion dollar illegal market." [PDF] Breaking (B)ads: How Advertiser-Supported Piracy Helps Fuel A Booming Multi-Billion (B) Dollar Illegal Market. Similarly, disinformation, hate speech, and fake news outlets have found easy money in digital advertising. By copying and pasting some code from ad exchanges, sites that are intent on spreading disinformation can now make money by selling digital ads. This is a funding source that was not available 10 years ago. The easy funding enables these fake news sites to expand operations and spread more misinformation -- e.g. the covid-19 pandemic is fake, vaccines don't work, masks don't protect you from the virus, etc.

The spread of this kind of disinformation has created further divisions in society -- anti-mask protests, ant-vaxx movements, etc. claiming they go against free speech or "freedom" itself. One could argue that the budgets that should have gone to digital ads are "fueling" further rifts in civil society which jeopardize democracy, instead of "fuel a functioning democracy." The Global Disinformation Index has years of data showing big advertisers' ads appearing on sites that are spreading disinformation. See their numerous published research studies.

This is how I responded to Martin's post:

This is the stupidest non-argument by Martin Kihn ... Saying that digital advertising must be good because advertisers are spending lots of money on it and ad fraud must be low because advertisers are paying for fraud detection services. Martin did not accomplish what he set out to do, which is to explain why the "nay-sayers" are wrong for calling out ad fraud and privacy abuses that came with surveillance marketing and the documented fact that little of it actually works. Have a look.

Martin wrote: "Advertisers aren’t stupid. That's why most of the biggest spenders use tools like Moat and IAS to minimize fraud risk." Martin quoted someone else "That’s still outrageous – as Michael Tiffany, co-founder of White Ops (now Human), often says, global credit card fraud is less than 1% of revenue. But ad fraud is nowhere near 88%, which a study by Oxford BioChronometrics once claimed." A d fraud is not 88%. That number was from a click fraud study by Oxford BioChronometrics from 2013.

If it's not 88%, what is it Martin? Martin has no other information than what the black box fraud detection tech companies report (1 - 3% fraud). But I have 10 years of data showing that ad fraud is not 1-3%. That just means the current black box fraud detection tech FAILED to detect anything wrong with the other 97 - 99% of the ads and clicks. White Ops loves to boast in press releases that they analyze 15 trillion bid requests per week. When pressed about what percentage it blocks for fraud, they refuse to answer. That's because most of it is let through. See: Why Black Box Fraud Detection Tech Sucks

Not all people hate ads. But that is also not an argument for ads being good. Martin wrote, "Ads can be entertaining, even informative, and provide a sweet break from the intensity of a just-discovered body or a third-down-and-goal. The best studies show that most people neither hate them nor love them." What's your point?

Whether consumers like ads or not, recent data shows that between 3-16% of users block ads on desktop (with browser extensions or ad blocking browsers), and 1-2% in mobile (because mobile browsers mostly don't support extensions). And most digital ads are useless, even for the advertisers that paid for them. Remember P&G turned off $200 million in digital ad spend and saw no change in sales. Chase turned off 99% of their "reach" and saw no change in business activity.

See: Why Does Digital Marketing Appear to Perform So Well and Fraud Appear So Low?

Ad-supported content is useful, because it is free for those who cannot afford to pay subscriptions. Martin cited, "In fact, half of consumers told The Trade Desk they didn’t want to pay more than $20 a month for streaming TV." Yeah, a lot of people don't want to pay for anything because they are conditioned to get stuff for free, even quality journalism. But quality journalism cannot survive on 2% of the digital ad dollars, after digital middlemen take a 98% toll for themselves and cannot compete against ads with low CPM prices sold by fake sites.

And of course Martin had to cite the Metaverse. Not sure why or how that helps his argument. Alas, after an entire article, he didn't successfully make the argument that "The haters are totally wrong about advertising. Here’s why."

To sum up what "digital advertising nay-sayers" like me are saying:

• digital ads are needed because it supports a free internet for those who cannot afford to pay for subscriptions or simply don't want to pay for content
• digital advertising is good and is highly effective in certain cases, when done right, for example when showing ads to humans. Advertisers are not stupid. Showing ads to bots won't do anything, duh.
• digital ad fraud is not 88%, nor is it 1 - 3%; ad fraud can be mostly avoided by buying ads from real publishers with real human audiences; this also includes search ads on Google.com itself, Facebook ads on Facebook itself, YouTube ads on selected YouTube channels, and a handful of other places where humans are.
• due to how bad fraud detection tech sucks, 97 - 99% of the fraud is NOT detected, so only 1 - 3% fraud is reported by those companies currently; brand safety detection is even worse, so digital ad dollars are not going to showing ads, they are going into the pockets of criminals or used to support further proliferation of disinformation
• the privacy invasive data collection done by ad tech companies is entirely unnecessary for good digital marketing; the sooner those get quashed by privacy regulations, the sooner advertisers can get back to real digital marketing. See: Marketers, Don't Worry About Losing 3P Cookies and Microtargeting. They Were Useless Anyway

Digital ad naysayers also don't think advertisers are stupid, just the ones spending billions on digital ads that don't work and millions on ad fraud detection services that don't work.

If advertisers have the courage to look more closely, ask harder questions, and truly assess for themselves whether digital ads drove any incremental business outcomes, then we have something to talk about.

As long as they prefer to drink Martin's kool-aid and that of other ad tech bros, keep on keeping on. We, digital ad naysayers, can't help you. Even alcoholics anonymous says you have to acknowledge you have a problem before we can help you fix the problem.

Dr Augustine Fou is an independent cybersecurity and ad fraud researcher who helps clients identify and remove fraud impacting their marketing campaigns. He is an industry-recognized thought leader in digital strategy and integrated marketing.