By Adam R Jacobson
RBR + TVBR
I credit my dad for being a great source for news tips and column ideas. Like Jack Myers of Media Village, my dad was an original “media ecologist” and claims to have coined the term while studying under the legendary Neil Postman at New York University in the 1960s.
Yet something didn’t make sense about his latest tip, which came via a late-evening phone call on Tuesday. He claimed that there was a scam involving online advertisers and fake websites. I didn’t believe it.
Then I read yesterday’s edition of The Wall Street Journal. He was right — the business and financial journal of record reports that, according to ad-fraud detection firm White Ops, an illicit advertising operation has been ripping off U.S. digital advertisers to the tune of more than $3 million per day.
Whoa … If that isn’t reason enough to start thinking about radio and TV advertising again, then broadcast stations may as well surrender their licenses to the FCC today.
