027 - Why is adtech broken? - with Nandini Jammi (Check My Ads)

Companies are spending a fucktonne of money in marketing, and more specifically in ads, mostly on the main platforms like Google and/or Facebook. However, these platforms act like a black box. You have little to no control over where do your ads end up appearing.

Nandini Jammi, a marketer at heart, started tracking the origin of the ads served to her and by scratching the surface, she ended up uncovering that a lot of ads were being served in hate speech sites, far-right platforms and all sorts of dodgy sites.

Nandini co-founded Sleeping Giants, an organisation devoted to brand responsibility through online activism. She's now running Check My Ads, an agency that ensures that your ads are not being served and thus funding the wrong sites.

Actually, one of her findings in the industry was working with Uber, as their Head of Performance Marketing put it: "I ended up uncovering $90 million in advertising fraud because of your actions when I was running performance marketing at Uber." - Mind-boggling innit.

We spoke with her and our friend Josh Feldberg about why adtech, as an industry, is broken, why technology has been the cause and can potentially be also the solution to this problem, what's the role of agencies in this, how to allocate marketing budgets and what tools are guilty of what amidst a very intense session of nerding out about advertisement and ethics in marketing and brand advertisement.

If you want to learn more, you can also subscribe to Nandini's newsletter BRANDED on Substack.

🎬 You can watch the video of this episode on the Life on Mars podcast website: https://podcast.marsbased.com/

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🎬 You can watch the video of this episode on the Life on Mars podcast website: https://podcast.marsbased.com/