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IAB Chief Calls On Online Ad Industry To Combat Fake News
- Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, January 31, 2017 8:36 AM
Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) President and CEO Randall Rothenberg called on advertisers, publishers, and ad tech companies to remove themselves from the fake news business and to take responsibility for preventing the spread of fake news online. Rothenberg spoke from the IAB's annual leadership meeting in Florida on Monday. He said fake news represents a "moral failure," according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. According to the paper, he said, "If you do not seek to address fake news and the systems, processes, technologies, transactions, and relationships that allow it to flourish, then you are consciously abdicating responsibility for its outcome—the depletion of the truth and trust that undergird democratic capitalism." The IAB has more than 600 digital companies as members, including Google and Facebook. He suggested that ad and media companies "should carefully examine their business practices and those of their partners to ensure their activities aren't helping to fund or otherwise support the 'crisis' of fake news."
To begin with, I have never published any fake news stories. I am sure I could make more money by doing so but I will not go down that road. However there is a under lining problem that would relieve much of the problem and this is advertising revenue distribution. The biggest ad distributors, Google, Facebook and Microsoft and others are keeping a too high percentage of the advertising total dollars and not enough go to the publishers. In fact several years ago, Google started to change their own rules and set out to keep a higher percentage of the revenue dollars.
As a results many publishers are adding the fake news story ads to increase lost revenue or revenue in general.
In short, look at the whole picture why the fake news stories/ads are being published.