Uber wasted $100 million on useless digital ad campaigns

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the estimated $100 million Uber apparently straight-up squandered on incredibly obvious, third-party digital advertising scams… something that is garnering mainstream coverage in the first days of 2021, despite coming to light back in February of last damn year.

You Google Played yourself — Former Sleeping Giants alum and co-founder of Check My Ads, Nandini Jammi, caught most of us up on the whole situation yesterday in a lengthy Twitter thread detailing just how Uber, the poster child of startup capitalism’s unethical robber baron mentality, managed to recently waste a mind-boggling $100 million in pointless digital advertising campaigns through a host of blatantly shady ad networks.

One such instance involved launching “‘battery saver’ style apps in Google Play, giving them root access to your phone.” Upon typing “Uber” into Google Play, the service “auto-fires a click to make it look like you clicked on an Uber ad and attribute the install to themselves.”

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Source: Uber wasted $100 million on useless digital ad campaigns

A lot more moralising in the article on how Uber is evil and how this writer would spend someone else’s money but we’re seeing more and more about how the huge digital “targetted” ad spends are actually not delivering on their promises

Robin Edgar

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