The Marketing Book Podcast

Inside the Black Box: How Marketers Waste Billions in Online Advertising by Bob Hoffman  ABOUT THE BOOK: In 2024, marketers will spend over $650 billion on online advertising. A substantial proportion of this - perhaps in the hundreds of billions - will be completely wasted. Not for the usual reason - their advertising stinks - but for another, darker reason. They have been cheated, conned, and robbed. It has been clear for about a decade that a great deal of online advertising is crooked. It is a black box. Money goes in and nobody knows what comes out. Between ad fraud, made for advertising sites, hidden middleman fees, crooked publishers, unreliable data, unreliable reports, viewability issues, click fraud, false attribution, consumer inattention, and the utter lack of transparency, advertisers are being fucked blind. The book should be of particular value to executives (like CEOs and CFOs) who cross their fingers and hope their marketing people know what they're talking about (Spoiler alert: They don't.)