Publisher of Newsweek and IB Times accused of buying traffic and ad fraud

[TitanTiger 20,511]

I'd felt that the tone of Newsweek recently had become less like a serious news magazine and more gossipy and tabloid like.  More sensational, in all likelihood to drive up traffic regardless of quality.

This story to me solidifies that feeling - that their publisher is just trying to drive numbers to increase ad revenue by any means possible. 

Quote

The publisher of Newsweek and the International Business Times has been engaging in fraudulent online traffic practices that helped it secure a major ad buy from a US government agency, according to a new report released today by independent ad fraud researchers.

IBTimes.com, the publisher’s US business site, last year won a significant portion of a large video and display advertising campaign for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency. Social Puncher, a consulting firm that investigates online ad fraud, alleges in its report that the ads were displayed to an audience on IBTimes.com that includes a significant amount of “cheap junk traffic with a share of bots.”...

...Current and former employees told BuzzFeed News that company leadership is putting the business and Newsweek brand at risk with questionable hires, unreasonable traffic goals for staffers, by issuing late payments to contractors, and using dubious traffic-generating practices for the IBT sites.

"The fact that they have been engaging in this really unsavory stuff does not surprise me at all," a former top-level editor for IBT told BuzzFeed News.

“They are being so reckless that you worry about people’s jobs and the brand," said a current Newsweek employee....

...Separate from concerns about bots, Social Puncher, BuzzFeed News, Pixalate, and DoubleVerify each documented IBT sites attempting to camouflage the nature of their purchased traffic to have it appear organic.

Before loading IBTimes.com in a pop-up or pop-under window, the traffic is first routed through at least one other domain. This practice helps obscure the fact that the traffic originated via a paid arrangement on an illegal streaming or file-sharing website. Using this method, the traffic appears to analytics software as if the user came via a referral from another website — a much more valuable form of organic traffic. The practice of redirecting pop-up or pop-under traffic through domains before hitting the ultimate destination was detailed in a recent BuzzFeed News investigation....

https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/the-publisher-of-newsweek-and-the-international-business?utm_term=.awOnRKD2Q#.ubgopwmBa

 

[HVAU 673]

That is disappointing.  IBT had a good bias rating.  https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/international-business-times/

[TitanTiger 20,511]

Yeah, to me this was never about bias.  It was just about a decline I noticed in a few recent stories on Newsweek in terms of journalistic quality.

[DKW 86 7,441]

The only thing I could fault with all this is using Buzzfeed as a source. Buzzfeed is just short of being TMZ on some of their reporting in the last year or so.

[TitanTiger 20,511]

12 minutes ago, DKW 86 said:

The only thing I could fault with all this is using Buzzfeed as a source. Buzzfeed is just short of being TMZ on some of their reporting in the last year or so.

Buzzfeed is sort of like Deadspin.  They have a ton of silly content aimed at millennials, full of snark.  But increasingly, they have ramped up their investigative reporting and are uncovering things that the regular news organizations aren't.

[DKW 86 7,441]

4 hours ago, TitanTiger said:

Buzzfeed is sort of like Deadspin.  They have a ton of silly content aimed at millennials, full of snark.  But increasingly, they have ramped up their investigative reporting and are uncovering things that the regular news organizations aren't.

They have far more silly ass content than any "real" news source out there. And...you are right, Snark is almost their SuperPower...

[AUDub 11,184]

9 hours ago, TitanTiger said:

Buzzfeed is sort of like Deadspin.  They have a ton of silly content aimed at millennials, full of snark.  But increasingly, they have ramped up their investigative reporting and are uncovering things that the regular news organizations aren't.

Their decision to publish the Steele dossier looks genius in hindsight.