Advertising
1 min read

Can we trust reports of audience growth for publishers?

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As you know the reports of digital advertising ad fraud are reaching epidemic proportions. It seems no report and no data stream can be trusted. There is a recent headline from Ad Age that reads “CMOs Are Sick of Digital Ad Hype,” and I can point you to literally a dozen others of the same kind.

Tempers are rising and advertisers are getting pissed off. Agencies are increasingly under the gun. And as I reported to you just a few days ago, the agencies are among the few who are having amazing growth. Apparently growth based on a substantial bit of known fraud.

The irony of this became clear when I received the latest The Magazine Media 360° Brand Audience Report for August 2016. “The report shows that the average audience for magazine brands is up 9.3% versus a year ago, the largest increase since early 2015.” The report goes on to state, “As we have seen since reporting began, Mobile Web contributes the majority of new unique users and is the largest source of monthly magazine media growth (+28.5%).”

I have to ask how much of that report contains incorrectly attributed digital data?

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