What the Japan Advertisers Association Urgent Recommendations mean About the issue of spoof advertising [Current status and challenges of digital advertising Hideyuki Nagasawa Series 1]

Digital advertising is rapidly evolving, with the latest methods and technologies such as generative AI being introduced one after another. On the other hand, serious issues such as the prevalence of spoofed advertisements and fraudulent advertisements have also come to light.

In this series,

Hideyuki Nagasawa, executive director of the Quality Media Consortium and special advisor to BI.Garage Co., Ltd.

, takes a bird’s-eye view of the evolution of Internet advertising from its early days to the present day, and discusses the problems with modern digital advertising and its true nature. Explain the ideal form.

Through this article, we will discuss why digital advertising has become so disliked, why the problem of fraudulent advertising has broken out, and what exactly are the essential requirements for digital advertising. Let’s explore.

Introduction: Restoring trust in digital advertising and looking ahead to the future

“Permission Marketing” (1999, from the book by Seth Godin) is a term that describes the innovativeness of Internet marketing in the early days of Internet media. Mr. Seth Godin is a former vice president of Yahoo!, a pioneer of the emerging internet media industry at the time.

He criticized the arrogance of marketing that used television and other mass media, which were the main media at the time, as “bare-foot marketing,” which unilaterally continued to shower users with large amounts of advertising information without their consent.

With the advent of interactive media (Internet media), the use of Internet marketing has become a focus of attention, as the advent of the Internet has made it possible to conduct user-friendly marketing by carefully obtaining prior consent from users and sending advertising information one-on-one. It was the latest marketing logic in its early days.

At that time, I started working at Dentsu in charge of digital media, and I held an in-house study session on this topic, inviting the translator of the same book, and I remember that Dentsu Hall, the headquarters of mass media marketing, was packed to capacity. The marketing environment around 2000 was such that the advent of the Internet was seen as revolutionary.

In the 25 years since then, the evaluation of Internet advertising methods has changed drastically.

Due to the automation of targeted advertising distribution, the lack of ethics in online marketing, where online advertising has become a type of marketing that ignores user psychology, is beginning to become a social issue.

This is “thief marketing” symbolized by spoof advertisements.

With generative AI, the techniques become even more sophisticated. It is now essential to go back to the origins of advertising and restore advertising quality and user acceptance. To achieve this, Nagasawa believed that the quality and user acceptability of quality content media would be the key to regaining trust, and began working on the “Quality Media Consortium” project (explained in the second half of the series).

This is a throwback to me, who worked at Dentsu for 20 years in newspaper advertising, and with the arrival of the Internet in Japan, became absorbed in the development, education, and sales activities of Internet media advertising, but in those 20 years, Internet media advertising has become the largest means of media advertising. Internet marketing has become the main method of modern marketing. In the history of its growth, the most important process for advertising to acquire user acceptance of advertising, which is described as “permission marketing,” has been ignored, and the reputation that “digital advertising is a nuisance and hated” has become established. There is strong remorse for the current situation.

Advertisements are inherently hated.

In order to have it accepted by users, we carefully wrap it in the wrapping paper of content media and deliver it with the best of creative advertising, so that it can finally be seen.

I think this is the same principle of sensitivity for the receiver, whether it is analog or digital.

Digital advertising ignores user sensibilities and forcibly bombards users with advertising as something of value. The result is narrow-range optimization that allows for a click-through rate of 0.1%, and ad-tech immersion to achieve it.

The biggest crisis in online advertising is that many users have fallen into distrust of digital advertising after 20 years of doing so. Specifically, the cause is

1. Disgust with “behavioral targeting advertising” and “retargeting advertising,” which use personal data targeting to separate advertisements from advertising media and chase people.

2. The ultimate gimmick is advertising expressions full of gimmicks to get into the attention economy on social media, the proliferation of intrusive ad formats that prevent users from properly experiencing the desired content, and spoof ads.

3. Digital platforms that are responsible for digital information distribution do not seriously manage content safety and advertisement safety. Users view information distribution platforms as reliable media, resulting in frequent distrust of advertisements due to the information perception gap between senders and receivers. .

This is the result of the platform’s irresponsible information neglect system. These factors are making not only spoof advertising but also online advertising as a whole unpopular.

Hated advertisement. In particular, by separating advertising content media and advertising space with performance-based advertising, users who visit media to enjoy their favorite content will not be able to accept advertisements, but the advertisements will become a nuisance. I can only see it. It also uses user behavior data for behavioral targeting and retargeting with virtually no permission. Even if you go cookieless, the ID will only be replaced.

There is a large awareness gap between the media needs of users who want to enjoy a variety of online content and the advertising needs that only evaluate client clicks as an advertising KPI.

Marketing that ignores user favorability and trustworthiness, and spoofed advertising are the result of this.

The use of information via the Internet has become commonplace, and digital platforms have formed a huge social information infrastructure that includes advertising information, providing users with a variety of conveniences. However, digital platform players maximized their profits through an automated transaction intermediary ecosystem in an environment that included disregard for social ethics, disregard for user acceptability, and forced purchase of media content. I have a feeling that this will accelerate further with the trend of AI and cookieless technology. It is unclear whether this is the downfall of the platform empire, where users are increasingly turning away from advertising, or the beginning of a new era of AI-powered ID empires. That’s where we are now.

In this essay series, I would like to take a bird’s-eye view of the current landscape of Internet advertising.

What the Japan Advertisers Association Urgent Recommendations mean

On May 17, 2024, the Japan Advertisers Association (JAA), the head office of Japanese advertisers, announced an urgent proposal.

Reference materials:
Urgent proposals against fraudulent advertising on digital media, which is becoming a social issue | Notice | Japan Advertisers Association

The title is “Urgent proposals against fraudulent advertising on digital media, which is becoming a social problem.” Particularly, advertisers participating in the Ad Association did not place fraudulent advertisements.

Many of the so-called spoof investment inducement advertisements that are frequently published on Digital Platform (hereinafter referred to as DPF) media are fraudulent advertisements, and the amount of damage has reached 21.9 billion in the last three months alone (according to the National Police Agency), which is a social problem.

As a

result

, JAA was forced to sound a warning to the advertising industry.

JAA continues to work on solving quality issues in digital advertising (ad fraud, brand safety, viewability, etc.) and has promoted various activities.

Digital advertising has rapidly grown to become the largest media advertising expense in Japan, and has become the main medium in which many advertisers spend more than traditional mass media advertising expenses.

(See Table 1)

Table 1: Trends in the proportion of Internet advertising expenditures in Japanese advertising expenditures (2007-2022)

*Click or tap the image to enlarge

However, unlike mass media, there are a wide variety of advertising media, and automatic advertising transactions in the programmatic advertising market allow a wide variety of advertisers to place ads relatively freely, so digital advertising is constantly expanding and expanding. New challenges are also emerging.

In order to eradicate ad fraud and establish brand safety, JAA established the Digital Advertising Quality Certification Authority (JICDAQ) in 2021 together with the Japan Advertising Association (JAAA) and Japan Interactive Association (JIAA), and established a third-party certification system. It has promoted the certification of excellent digital advertising businesses and awareness-raising activities, and has promoted the incorporation of digital advertising into a sound digital advertising industry.

However, with the spread of various types of Internet usage, mainly digital platforms, and the rapid expansion of various services on the Internet

, the reliability and safety of information distribution media has greatly increased due to the spread of fake news and disinformation. Damaging social issues are coming to the fore.

Situations are emerging in Japan as well as around the world where governments are forced to consider countermeasures. A typical example of this is the rampant use of so-called “spoof investment fraud advertisements”.

These malicious and illegal advertisements continue to be published on digital media used by many users and advertisers, causing frequent harm to consumers. This situation is why the Ad Association has sounded the alarm to those involved in the digital advertising business in the form of an urgent proposal, calling for immediate and sincere efforts to improve the situation. Digital advertising is an ecosystem that is formed through the involvement of various players, and for its healthy operation, advertising market participants, including users, must work together to rectify the issues. This is because they are building a complex social information infrastructure.

Therefore

, JAA says, “Fraud advertisements and fake advertisements that maliciously infringe on rights and violate related laws and regulations are serious problems that damage the value of digital media and the relationship of trust between advertisers and consumers. “Each and every person involved should realize that they have a major influence on the future of advertising,” he strongly asserts in his proposal.

I think this is completely correct.

(In response to the JAA’s recommendations, the PMP “Quality Media Consortium,” which is composed of 30 leading content media companies and whose secretariat Nagasawa is involved with, also expressed support for the urgent recommendations of the Ad Association, from the standpoint of placing the highest priority on the quality of advertising media. ) was issued on June 6th.

Reference material:

We support the Japan Advertisers Association’s urgent recommendations against fraudulent advertising | MediaString – Connecting valuable advertising to the future

What is the “spoof advertising problem”?

First, I would like to briefly explain “cases of impersonation advertising fraud and its mechanisms”, including examples of real fraudulent advertising, for which countermeasures are currently being discussed in various places, including the Ad Association Urgent Recommendation. (Table 2)

Table 2: Examples of fake article advertising fraud *Click or tap the image to enlarge

These are examples of Facebook, where spoof advertisements are concentrated. First of all, the one on the right is a fake advertisement for the fake Akira Ikegami version. Many celebrities have had their likenesses and statements used without their permission, and have been impersonated as investment promoters. The one on the left is an Elon Musk article in the Nikkei online edition, which is a spoof ad that has been devised to make it more authentic.

Articles and titles from each newspaper company are used without permission, and advertising credits are not included. Also, many spoofed videos are posted on fakebook. In many cases, they imitate the format of news broadcasts on TV stations.

Table 3: On the left

is a case in which a TV Tokyo News video was imitated

, and on the right is

a case in which a Prime Minister’s press conference on NHK News was skillfully imitated.Even

the audio and on-screen explanation board were skillfully tampered with, and generative AI was used to broadcast the video overseas. It seems that it was produced.

*Click or tap the image to enlarge

Newspaper companies and broadcasting stations are also warning users about copying such articles and news. (Table 4)

Table 4: Examples of each media’s response to fake article fraud *Click or tap the image to enlarge

This is a fraudulent advertisement that is based on the backdrop of Japan’s highest stock prices and a boom in new NISA investment. The mechanism is ingenious, and many of them are spoofed ads or videos that lure users into an explanation-like persuasion screen on the next screen, guide them to individual LINE accounts (pseudonymous fake accounts), and then use individual LINE chats to cleverly defraud users. If you develop a talk and get users to transfer investment funds (to a pseudonymous account), the funds will be immediately transferred to an overseas account, where they will be turned into crypto currency and the cash will disappear into the darkness. It is a double fraud structure involving spoof advertisements on SNS and fake SNS accounts. Most of the cases involve international organized crime, and it is said that the current state of affairs is that the investigation side is unable to pursue cases overseas. He is a malicious and intelligent criminal who knows everything about the Internet and financial systems. (Table 5)

Table 5: Examples of fraudulent advertisements and fake accounts using Facebook, LINE, etc. *Click or tap the image to enlarge

1. Many people apply for advertisements on global digital platforms such as Facebook from overseas and do not understand the reality of advertisers. Or they are pretending to be false advertisers.

2. It is a cyber crime that is difficult to arrest domestically, as the fraudsters are lured to fake accounts such as LINE, where they commit individual fraudulent acts online without meeting face-to-face, and the money is transferred to a fake account and sent overseas.

3. We are distributing “efficient” digital advertisements by criminally exploiting behavioral targeting techniques in digital advertisements to narrow down target users who are interested in investment and who are vulnerable. It can be said that this crime is a far more intelligent crime compared to analog crimes such as conventional “I-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-Ore” frauds, as the wealth of personal ID data possessed by the DPF is fully utilized in the crime.

Are the advertising media and advertising distribution media that receive advertising revenue from such criminal advertising responsible for advertising management, and if so, why are they not being properly managed and operated? Ad cooperatives and others are strongly concerned about the current situation in which advertisements that are supposed to be beneficial and provide convenience to users are instead causing damage, such as whether or not criminals are exploiting flaws in the operation system of digital advertisements. There is a sense of crisis.

Discussions on countermeasures, including advertising issues, are currently underway at the Government Digital Subcommittee and the General Affairs Committee on How to Improve the Soundness of General Affairs Digital Information (detailed minutes and materials are available on
the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications website
), but most user experts I think that most people’s opinions are candid and can be found

in the comments in the Toyo Keizai Online article (contributed to AERA dot.) by Mr. Hokuto Kasai

of Crosswork Co., Ltd., who is also a leading expert on countering fraudulent advertisements. (Table 6)

Table 6:

“Why me?” Frequent victims of spoofing in SNS ads Face photo of investment opponent Hiroko Ogiwara used in investment ads | AERA dot. | Toyo Keizai Online

*Click or tap the image to enlarge

The following is the opinion of META, the company that operates Facebook. (Table 7)

Table 7: Excerpt from Meta’s views on digital advertising quality management (
from the 11th Monitoring Meeting on Transparency and Fairness of Digital Platforms in 2023
)

*Click or tap the image to enlarge

I strongly feel that there is a gap in the ethical sense of responsibility for managing digital advertising.

In addition to spoofed advertisements, digital information platforms that have become so large have brought about a variety of issues regarding their reliability and stability as social information infrastructure. (Table 8)

Table 8: The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has requested appropriate responses from platform operators including X due to the rapid increase in rumors and disinformation following the Noto Peninsula earthquake *Click or tap on the image to enlarge

The AD Association’s urgent recommendations make concrete recommendations for the multi-stakeholder response to not only the impersonation fraud advertising case but also the diverse and serious issues of digital advertising. In the next installment, I would like to delve deeper into the current status and challenges of digital advertising in line with the points raised.

What is Facebook? Basic knowledge, Instagram linkage, and advertising explained

[Current status and issues of digital advertising serialized by Hideyuki Nagasawa]

1. What the Japan Advertisers Association Urgent Recommendations mean: Regarding the issue of spoofed advertising (this article)

2. Distrust in digital advertising has bottomed out, and issues with advertising quality and advertising media quality

3. How much do users hate digital advertising? The challenge

4. The power of digital platform media and the problems caused by its oligopoly. Structural issues behind the spoofed advertising problem, etc.

5. What is the prescription for reviving digital advertising in the modern advertising and content environment where generative AI is on the rise? Meaning of “Quality Media Declaration”