Book Title
Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet
Type
BookNon-fiction
Author
Tim Hwang
A compelling book comparing the present day digital advertising industry with the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008. It’s hard to imagine that “ads don’t work” but I do believe that the system powering them is complex, automated, and holds an enormous amount of money.
Here are a few ways Hwang makes the connection from the 2008 crisis to the contemporary digital advertising industry:
- An existing problem growing swiftly in scale
- Indications that the value of the core product (in this case, attention) is actually dropping in value. Ad blindness, ad blockers, and fraud all contribute.
- Movement towards greater opacity and automation rather than transparency.
His final recommendation is to enforce greater visibility and transparency into the industry, so that the product and its value can be better evaluated.
It is funny that the only way to see the results of your facebook ads performance is from facebook.
I’m also reminded of EVCs - engaged view conversations and the concerns we see from advertisers