The Skeptical Marketer
Podcast Description
Big Tech is under the microscope — and we’re not looking away. The Skeptical Marketer is your guide to the digital world we’ve built, featuring sharp, unfiltered conversations about antitrust trials, ad fraud, platform accountability, and the truth behind your media spend. Hosted by Jake Surrey, this show brings together legal experts, watchdogs, and insiders to unpack the forces shaping tech, trust, and transparency. New episodes every week.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast explores themes such as antitrust trials, ad fraud, digital marketing strategies, and the evolving landscape of platform accountability. Notable episodes include discussions on the seismic shifts in marketing, the decline of traditional search, practical audience targeting strategies, and the future of advertising and privacy in a data-driven world.
Big Tech is under the microscope — and we’re not looking away. The Skeptical Marketer is your guide to the digital world we’ve built, featuring sharp, unfiltered conversations about antitrust trials, ad fraud, platform accountability, and the truth behind your media spend. Hosted by Jake Surrey, this show brings together legal experts, watchdogs, and insiders to unpack the forces shaping tech, trust, and transparency. New episodes every week.
Ad fraud isn’t a niche problem, it’s the business model.
In this episode of The Skeptical Marketer, host Jake Surrey sits down with Dr. Augustine Fou, one of the original investigators of digital ad fraud and the founder of Fou Analytics, to unpack just how deep and normalized the problem has become. From fake websites and cloned mobile apps to legacy fraud verification firms that look the other way, Dr. Fou explains why the digital ad ecosystem remains a playground for organized crime—and why marketers can’t rely on regulation or the platforms to save them. Drawing on 15 years of research and real-world auditing experience, he reveals how advertisers can finally take back control of their ad dollars and demand accountability.
Key takeaways & lessons:
- The scale of the problem: Fou estimates that up to 90% of programmatic ad impressions are fake—driven by bots, fake websites, and cloned mobile apps.
- The illusion of safety: Legacy fraud verification firms report only ~1% invalid traffic, masking how widespread ad fraud truly is.
- Why big brands lose more: Enterprise advertisers chasing cheap CPMs and big impression counts are prime targets for fraud.
- Regulation won’t save you: With no anti-fraud laws or enforcement in digital advertising, marketers must protect themselves.
- AI’s limited impact: Generative AI won’t solve or exponentially worsen ad fraud—it simply makes it easier for bad actors to scale fake content.
Dr. Augustine Fou’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/augustinefou
Fou Analytics Website: https://www.fouanalytics.com
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