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George Parker: let’s hear it for Bob Hoffman’s Adscam

AdScam… The Blog… The Book…

Readers of More About Advertising may or may not know that I have written a blog titled “AdScam” for the last twenty years or so. In it, I point out the occasional good thing happening in the ad biz, but more often or not, I kick the shit out of the multitude of bad things increasingly taking place. If you check it out, pay particular attention to Friday’s posts, especially T.G.I.K.M.F. That’s “Thank God It’s Kate Moss Friday.” In which I feature pictures of Kate from my massive Kate Kollection, more often than not flashing her naked knockers.

This gets me banned from Facebook for a couple of weeks, as ZuckerNozzle has a thing about nudity in the Metaverse. Moronic avatars are OK, but no tits and arse. Anyway, enough about AdScam the blog, let’s move on to ADSCAM the book. My good friend, Bob Hoffman, he of San Francisco ad fame and writer of an excellent weekly blog, has come up with yet another great book… It’s titled ADSCAM… Yes, he asked my permission to do the homage, which I gladly gave, in return, asking for a Porsche. This he promptly bought for me. It is six inches long and runs on three triple A batteries.

Anyway, the book kicks the shit out of the tracking-based online advertising industry which he finds far more corrupt and dangerous than ever. Describing it as One of History’s Greatest Frauds and a Threat to Democracy. Bob peels the scabrous layers of the rotting onion that is the ad biz today. He does it with such panache that Fu Man Chu would turn green with envy. Oh, wait a minute, Fu Man Chu is green. Moving on… Bob concludes that the tracking-based online advertising industry is “a criminal racket of epic proportions. It is a giant worldwide scam — organized crime at a global scale that has been normalized by involving virtually every major corporation, every pretty-sounding trade organization, and the entire advertising, marketing, and digital media industry.” Strong stuff indeed. Wrapping things up, Bob suggests that we should ban tracking on the Internet.

Sorry, Bob. It’ll never happen. Based on the ad biz’s past performance, it’ll probably get worse. Time to get back to my Kate Kollection.

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