This paper reveals the fundamental lie of contemporary marketing – particularly marketing analytics and digital marketing. The data they analyse are stupid!
It details how marketers ignored this fact until powerful actors (primarily Google) realised they could make more money selling their products if marketers were convinced to care about a new type of data.
They called it viewability. It was meant to represent that an advert has been viewed by a consumer. But guess what? It doesn’t measure this at all.
The paper explores how and why marketers can be so stupid!
Social Studies of Marketing 