Ben Edelman, Sony’s Crackle: Invisible Traffic Galore
Advertisers buying display ads from Sony’s Crackle.com rightly and reasonably expect that users can see the ads. After all, a visible ad is a basic and crucial condition for effective display advertising: If a user can’t see ad, then the impression is wasted, as is the associated spending. Nonetheless, in a surprising series of incidents, numerous Crackle partners are loading the Crackle site invisibly — thereby overcharging advertisers for worthless invisible impressions.
Edelman presents three recent examples: http://www.benedelman.org/news/042710-1.html
