Episode 184: Ben Edelman Will Send You to Affiliate Jail

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

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Ari Paparo (0:36)

Welcome to the Marketecture Podcast. This is Ari Paparo. I'm joined by Eric Franchi, and our guest today is Ben Edelman, who's an independent consultant who has been tracking ad fraud, ad issues, affiliate marketing, and all that stuff for pretty much as long as I've been in the industry, probably as long as Eric has. Have you ever met Ben?

Eric Franchi (0:56)

I have not met Ben. I have read his stuff. I have observed some of the impact he's had on the space. He's not well-known, I think so much today, but he came back into the news with that whole FIA scandal or FIA story that we talked about last week.

Ari Paparo (1:13)

Yeah. So we'll talk about FIA. We'll talk about some older things like Blinkx, which is a blast from the past, AppLovin installs, and just the whole question about, can affiliate marketing be trusted? Can it be secure? Because that's his bread and butter. Then we've got news, we've got earnings from Meta and Microsoft, but also Google's new Buyer Direct product, and a bunch of changes to the influencer space that are noteworthy. So we have a lot to talk about.

One quick note is, my newsletter this past week was about podcasting, and why it's such a mess, and why the AMP accords that came out were confusing, and things like that. Got so much feedback on that. Everyone in the podcast industry told me I was an idiot, which I'm used to.

And so I think we're going to have a follow-up episode in a couple of weeks where we'll have a representative from the industry talk about that and give the other point of view. So stay out of my DMs for now. We'll be giving equal time.

Eric Franchi (2:09)

I mean, it's like, they CC'd me. Some people CC'd me, too.

Ari Paparo (2:12)

I know, right?

Like, you're like my dad here. Like, you're sorry. Ari got off the rails. We got to bring him back. It's fine. I get it. I get it. The track podcast. I understand. I get it. It's trackable. Fine.

SPEAKER_4 (2:27)

And that's work. Yeah.

Ari Paparo (2:30)

Meanwhile, in addition to the AMP Accords, the IAB just launched the AMP Accords, which are spelled with an extra A. The agentic advertising, I don't know what MP stands for, but in our effort to continually confuse everyone in the entire advertising industry, we've got the acronyms going. All right. Let's get into it with Ben Edelman.

Welcome, Ben. Are you calling in from Singapore, did you say?

Ben Edelman (2:53)

I am. Decided it was time to take my kids somewhere hotter and sunnier than Seattle. So here we are.

Ari Paparo (2:59)

I hear the food is really good. Have you done the food stalls, the night markets, things like that?

Ben Edelman (3:03)

For sure. All of that. We're total foodies.

Ari Paparo (3:05)

Cool. What's been the best highlight food wise?

Ben Edelman (3:09)

We like what they call heartland, the places that tourists don't go. So we tend to go off the beaten path by quite a bit.

Ari Paparo (3:17)

All right. So that has nothing to do with why you're here. We've always wanted to have you on. I've been following your career for 10 plus years. You've done some really interesting research over the years. You get into the little nooks and crannies of this advertising world.

So we want to talk about the recent FIA mini scandal and some other things you've written. But as is usually how I like to do this thing. So let's go back memory lane, go back down the history here. Probably the first time that you and I crossed paths or that many people heard about you, was a little company called Blinkx. Not Blink, but Blinkx.

We all have history on that. Why don't you give us like a reminder, what was the Blinkx scandal and how were you involved, and what it really took a lot of turns to?

Ben Edelman (4:07)

First of all, I love that that's the first thing you know me from. I feel I had a career before that. Put some guys in jail, destroyed some adware companies, temporary restraining order against a video streamer years before YouTube started with its copyright infringing shenanigans. But Blinkx is a great place to begin.