Ex-UM privacy chief lifts lid: Google has ‘captured’ trade associations and holdcos, personalisation-precision a ‘fallacy’ based on ‘garbage’ data reaching ‘fake people’ | Mi3

Former UM privacy chief Arielle Garcia knows the $700bn global digital ad industry is founded on trading “useless, garbage data” because a) she spent a decade in media ops and compliance and b) she’s accessed her own profile from adtech vendors. The result? 500 laughably contradictory audience segments where she is simultaneously woman and man,…

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Shadier Than Forbes? Premium Publishers Are Partnering With Content Farms To Make A Quick Programmatic Buck | AdExchanger

“Uncovering Earth’s Secrets: A Journey Into Its Deepest Hole” That’s the title of a made-for-arbitrage (MFA) article about a failed Soviet-era scientific expedition to drill a hole tens of thousands of feet into the Earth’s crust. But it could easily double as a headline for the latest ad tech exposé. The story referenced above appears…

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Publishers turn to other platforms to address platform referral traffic issues – Digiday

Nine digital publishing execs that spoke with Digiday said they are investing in other social platforms like Instagram and TikTok to grow their reach. But the question remains if alternative platforms can actually make up the social referral deficit. As Digiday reported last year, those platforms do more for publishers trying to build up their…

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Brands Paid for Ads on Forbes.com. Some Ran on a Copycat Site Instead. – WSJ

Forbes for years ran an alternate version of its website where it packed ads that were intended to run on Forbes.com, another sign that brands don’t always get what they pay for in the opaque digital-advertising market. The alternate site, which Forbes shut down Tuesday following inquiries from The Wall Street Journal, featured stories from…

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G/O Media and Kotaku staff are locked in a battle for the gaming website’s soul and business – Digiday

Kotaku’s future is hanging in the balance. It hinges on whether the decades-popular online publication’s owner G/O Media succeeds in transforming it from a gaming news outlet to a hub for game guides — tips and walkthroughs to help gamers overcome tricky challenges. This strategic shift is a gamble for G/O Media, spurred by the…

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How Google is killing independent sites like ours – HouseFresh

Google regularly launches updates to its algorithm to continuously improve search results quality. Think of these updates as a refresh of the system where rankings change: some websites see an improvement while others see a decline. At HouseFresh, we keep an eye on Google’s news and documentation because these updates can literally make or break…

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The Metaverse, Zuckerberg’s Tech Obession, Is Officially Dead. ChatGPT Killed It.

The Metaverse, the once-buzzy technology that promised to allow users to hang out awkwardly in a disorientating video-game-like world, has died after being abandoned by the business world. It was three years old. The capital-M Metaverse, a descendant of the 1982 movie “Tron” and the 2003 video game “Second Life,” was born in 2021 when…

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AI Chatbots Have Been Used to Create Dozens of News Content Farms – Bloomberg

The news-rating group NewsGuard has found dozens of news websites generated by AI chatbots proliferating online, according to a report published Monday, raising questions about how the technology may supercharge established fraud techniques. The 49 websites, which were independently reviewed by Bloomberg, run the gamut. Some are dressed up as breaking news sites with generic-sounding names…

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