How the online advertising industry fuels ‘fake news’
London School of Economics
The U.K. Parliament’s inquiry into “fake news” asks, “Have changes in the selling and placing of advertising encouraged the growth of fake news, for example by making it profitable to use fake news to attract more hits to websites, and thus more income from advertisers?” That’s an important question, Damian Tambini argues, because its answer invites an analysis of the economic structures that support “fake news.” Tambini explains the advertising cycle from selling ads programmatically to fake news organizations buying into ad networks to show how the underlying structures of the online ad industry fuels “fake news.”