What do the war in Ukraine, toilet cleaner, and the dying news industry have in common? In short: online ads.
Jesse Brown
Host & Publisher
Cherise Seucharan
Reporter, CANADALAND
Jonathan Goldsbie
News Editor
Tristan Capacchione
Audio Editor & Technical Producer
Sarah Lawrynuik
Senior Producer
Kieran Oudshoorn
Managing Editor, Podcasts
Hosted by Jesse Brown
The digital advertising industry is worth billions, but many companies don’t actually know where their ad dollars end up. Programmatic ad exchanges and other third-party platforms have enabled companies to buy ads without the hassle of going to each seller. But in doing so, these ad exchanges have opened the door for fake news and disinformation sites to profit. As reporter Cherise Seucharan finds out, it has become easier and easier for these sites to proliferate, while real news websites lose out.
Featured in this episode:
Nandini Jammi and Claire Atkin, co-founders of Check My Ads; Augustine Fou, anti-ad fraud consultant; Danny Rogers, co-founder and executive director at The Global Disinformation Index
“Elon flipped out. He saw Substack as sort of like the number one competitor to X at the time. He banned discussion of the word Substack. And to this day, there's a lot of people who when they want to talk about Substack on Twitter, they write like, S star star B, like, like we're Voldemort or something.” - Chris Best, Substack co-founder and CEO
“In an effort to put everything into question, we run the danger of losing any kind of firm footing on which to build a more just and equitable society. So the logical end game of a certain project of questioning is total bafflement or the destruction of everything.” - Professor Mark Kingwell
“Artificial intelligence was considered the realm of lunatics and wackos and eccentrics. So they couldn't get hired at really elite universities in the United States. [The] University of Toronto hired them, and then it turned out they were really right and all the elite people were really wrong.” - Stephen Marche, author of “Was Linguistic A.I. Created by Accident?”
Israel’s Ambassador to Canada, Iddo Moed, sits down with Jesse for a candid and intense discussion about how Israel’s actions during the war are impacting Canadians.
