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
“Here's something that not many people know about the baby business. There are ‘leg-men.’ We call them ‘leg-men’ though some of them are women, who make it their business to find pregnant women who are not married. The leg-men look for them in a million and one places. They meet them in bars and parks and cafes and all over. They hear things.” - Eugene Moyneur (ex-wrester, ex-bodybuilder, baby-smuggler)
“My job is to smuggle black market babies out of Canada and into the US. I’ve been at it off and on for the past 5 years. Maybe there’s an easier way to make a bankroll, but I don’t know it.” - Eugene Moyneur (ex-wrestler, ex-bodybuilder, baby-smuggler)
“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
