Audience buying is cloaked in opacity – the major platforms are deeply invested in making sure no one truly understands how attention is priced. That means a media company buying audience on Facebook or Google will always be at an informational disadvantage – exposing them to a new kind of arbitrage, one executed by the platform’s own algorithms... See more

Alongside rising CACs, Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) changes have dealt a blow to digital advertising. ATT is Apple’s opt-in privacy framework that requires all iOS apps to ask users for permission to share their data. Spoiler alert: many people do not opt in. Meta estimates that it will lose $10 billion in ad sales revenue (about 8% of... See more

The Faustian bargain of the digital age—free or cheap digital conveniences in exchange for our data—was only ever explained to us after it was already a done deal. And it represents an enormous and radical shift not only in how we live but also, far more importantly, in what our lives are for. We are all mine sites now, data mine sites, and despite

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