This practice is used in almost every industry with finite inventory by Revenue Management teams where there is opportunity to pre-empt a booking, slot, or (where I am most familiar) a tv spot.
I recall working for television systems management and having a revenue and yield optimization consultant from the airline industry present to our company with methods we could use to increased revenue by booking even more spots than we had and either pre-empting more low value TV spots with automatic optimization and moving of the spots, or simply taking more time away from marketing or promotional ads from the network.
Most of the practices recommended by this consultant we had already implemented, but there were some really neat recommendations specifically from the airline industry in order to maximize revenue, most of them revolved around overbooking. Eligible TV spots would be automatically moved forward (front-loaded) into weekly rotation selling options (groups of program sold under the same name and price).
I could go on forever, but I suppose as a general comment regarding revenue management and yield optimization there is nothing which surprises me about these practices.
I think the important thing here is just honesty in the business practice. Presumably you were upfront with your clients about what they were actually purchasing and what the risks were. The article here is not about overselling per se but about lying about it.
The book does a great job of expressing the history of medicine leading up to the 1918 Spanish Flu.
But above all the book goes into detailed recollection on the arrogance of leadership in the face of this deadly disease. From politicians listing it as merely a regular flu, to military generals choosing not to quarantine troops... leading to massive casualties and the spread of the disease. All leading up to a realization of severity, when proper measures are taken.
I believe a newer print also has a note about Swine Flu, my copy is fairly old and does not include this.
Great resource, I've used this often from client computers to look at some basic data before offering support.
I use most of the advertising related APIs on a daily basis. I am very happy that I can take a look at a client's account, at the client's desk, before access is provided.
An API explorer for Doubleclick for Publishers seems to be missing from the list, I presume due to the increased complexity of DFP it was not included, are there any plans to include DFP in here?
I don't need to fasten my seat belt, this makes perfect sense. The supply and demand of homes drives the prices, as well as some other factors, and this is simply what people who are paid a lot of money are willing to pay.
When good jobs of a certain industry are concentrated to such a small area of the country, "stop moving there" really isn't much of an option. We need to find a way to spread the jobs out a bit, because it should be obvious that the companies employing those professionals have no incentive to do so without outside intervention.
They're really not that concentrated. The idea that, if you're in a tech-related field, your life is effectively over if you don't move to the Bay area is complete nonsense.
The article doesn't explain how they made money, you need a relationship with SSPs and Exchanges to make requests and monetize the impression, even if you're just sending firing tracking pixels for creative view or complete, etc.
So how did these people make money? Are they for hire? Did they offer services to spoof the publisher domain and make revenue out of thin air, taking a cut from the pub?
I'm wondering this too. I used to work at a DSP and we had to deal with a lot of clickfraud. Typically it took the form of: a shady publisher which has somewhat legitimate content and has a relationship with one or more SSPs. Then the publisher goes to "traffic growth" sites like cpmbux.com, and purchases fake traffic. Those fake traffic sites own botnets which they leverage to generate the fake impressions on those publisher's websites. Because there's this separation between the two parties, even if the publisher gets shut down by the SSP for engaging in clickfraud (there's still plausible deniability), the fake traffic site can continue marketing themselves to other not so by-the-book publishers.
I'm not sure if it's a similar arrangement here. The linked report makes it sound like they own the publisher sites too, but it's hard for me to fathom how they could maintain "legitimate" relationships with SSPs when they're funnelling out millions of dollars per day. It goes without saying that it's much harder to fake your way through the financial system.
