Category Archives: Huh?

August 15, 2016 · 12:45 pm

Scum Of The Digital Earth

I read something the other day that made me sad and then angry. It’s the sort of thing that lessens my faith in humanity, although as I describe it you’ll probably just say I’m naive. It concerns the PPI business. What’s that? It stands for pay-per-install and the companies involved in it, some of whom are business names you’d know, are the scum of the digital earth in my book. Why is that?

First, what exactly is PPI? According to the folks at NYU who did some research on this topic with Google, commercial PPI is a monetization scheme wherein third-party applications — often consisting of unwanted software such as adware, scareware, and browser hijacking programs — are bundled with legitimate applications in exchange for payment to the legitimate software company. When users install the package, they get the desired piece of software as well as a stream of unwanted programs riding stowaway. It’s big business, with one outfit reporting $460 million in revenue in 2014 alone.

Ever installed a legitimate piece of software only to find your browser behaving strangely afterward? You get a barrage of advertisements on the screen, or a flashing pop-up warning of the presence of malware, demanding the purchase of what is often fraudulent antivirus software. On other occasions, the system’s default browser is hijacked, redirecting to ad-laden pages. The vendors of this crap will claim that you approved the installation of all the additional malware by clicking through the terms and conditions or forgetting to uncheck a box approving the install. Having had to remove this junk from both my family’s and friends’ computers I can tell you that that simple error can cost you may hours of diagnosis and repair, or a bit of money to purchase an anti-malware package.

But it gets worse. Today it’s just crapware, adware and the like. What happens when someone takes a check from someone who has more sinister intentions? Keyloggers and other spyware could just as easily be installed. As one article on the study pointed out:

The one-year study by Google and NYU Tandon School of Engineering of affiliate networks running pay-per-install programs (PPI) found that nearly 60% of offers bundled with these programs are flagged as unwanted, and that in aggregate drove 60 million weekly download attempts with tens of millions of installs detected in the last year. These sites can run ad injectors.

Tens of millions of installs a week. Hundreds of millions of dollars changing hands, and a conscience nowhere to be found. I’m not one to encourage government intervention in the digital realm but someone needs to shut these scum down before something catastrophic happens. It’s not all “Russian hackers” doing this. These “businesses” are about as close to criminal as one can get without being arrested. What are your thoughts?

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August 10, 2016 · 12:09 pm

Influencing The Influencers

If you’re a baseball fan of a certain age (OK, if you’re really old), you will probably recall Yogi Berra drinking Yoo-Hoo in commercials. In fact, he was synonymous with the brand (some people thought he owned the company). People loved Yogi, Yogi loved Yoo-Hoo, ergo, you should love Yoo-Hoo too. That’s pretty much how celebrity endorsements work, right? A famous person lends their brand equity to another brand, transferring positive attributes to the brand and for which the brand pays.

(Complete digression) According to his autobiography, Yogi was answering the phones at Yoo-Hoo one day and a woman calls to ask if Yoo-Hoo is hyphenated. His response: “No ma’am, it’s not even carbonated.’ “(/Complete digression)

I’ve written before about the modern digital equivalent of celebrity endorsements which is called influencer marketing. Some of the digital celebrities have huge followings even though in comparison to the older definition of celebrities – sports or entertainment stars – their audiences are niche. That hasn’t stopped many brands from paying the influencers to say nice things about their products. The problem is that unlike seeing the old kind of brand endorsement in a commercial the consumer can’t know for sure if the endorsement has been a paid insertion or whether the influencer just really likes something.

I bring this up because even though the FTC has some pretty strict rules in place with respect to disclosing payments for endorsements to prevent consumer confusion, new data from influencer marketing and media platform SheSpeaks shows that one out of four influencers has been asked not to disclose their commercial arrangements with a brand. That’s bad and self-defeating.

A while back I tweeted nice things about TSA Pre-check but the TSA didn’t ask me to do so. The folks who saw the tweet (and anything here on the screed while we’re on the topic) can rely that it was my honest opinion and not the result of money changing hands. Why would a quarter of  brands want to hide the payments? Do they think the message contained in the post on Instagram or Facebook or Snapchat is compromised if it’s known money changed hands? I think we all knew Yogi said nice things because he was paid but we also assumed he liked the product. Most endorsers I know don’t just cash the check to endorse any old thing. They realize that the brand is also a reflection on them. Either side hiding the payment works to the detriment of both.

This problem isn’t going to go away as influencer marketing continues to grow as a platform. Endorsements haven’t gone away over the years and won’t. Actresses will be given free gowns to wear on red carpets. Jocks will drink Gatorade. One can only hope that all parties involved keep it transparent and above board so it doesn’t become yet another good idea that was disrupted by a few bad actors. You agree?

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August 8, 2016 · 11:36 am

Bad Headline, Good Reminder

I missed the end of the Sprint Cup race yesterday. Not a big deal, I thought, you can read the results in the paper or online. I still have some of my old school media habits and reading the paper with breakfast is one of them, so I was little surprised to see the headline you see pictured below. After all, the only NASCAR driver named Hamilton that I know of was Bobby Hamilton, who passed away in 2007. Had F1’s Lewis Hamilton somehow entered the race and how did I not know that? And why was he driving the 11, which has a regular driver?

None of the above. As it turned out the race winner was Denny Hamlin, who competes every week in the 11 car. The headline was completely wrong. This isn’t a website either, so millions of papers aren’t going to be corrected with the press of a button. Putting aside what must be some editor’s massive embarrassment, there is something any of us in business can learn from this.

Newspapers are supposed to be trusted sources of information. While there is no doubt that the public’s trust in media generally as unbiased factual reporting sources has declined, most mainstream outlets still hold themselves to a higher standard. When mistakes happen – and they do daily – most reputable outlets correct them and call attention to the fact that they have done so, recognizing that they erred in the first place. That’s applicable to any business, as is attention to detail. Someone screwed up badly here. Knowing that it’s generally the editors who write (and certainly approve) the headlines, my money is that the fault lies there. Messing up the big things is usually obvious but it’s the lack of attention to the little things that I think irk consumers even more.

This bad headline is a good reminder. Any business loses trust when they mess up. If we’ve done a good job filling up our karmic bank accounts with our customers, we’ll be fine making these withdrawals for mistakes. Do so on a regular basis, however, and that account becomes overdrawn. That’s when our customers move on. Does that headline make sense?

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