Fake News? Real Money though…

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An Idea (by Ingenious Piece)

4 min readOct 10, 2020

Whether subconsciously or not, you have probably tried to figure out at some point just how much money the advertising technology (Ad-Tech) companies make. Right from the annoying advert pop-ups at the start and midst of streaming your favorite content on YouTube, to the sponsored posts of individuals or companies on Instagram and Facebook, we have all encountered them.

Money Photo by https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

However, taking a closer look and narrowing this down to a niche in this ‘market’, an area that prior to the 2016 US Presidential election was relatively uncharted has raked in millions of American dollars from misinforming the public and here’s how that works.

Early Days

In traditional advertising, media publishers had built empires around the power of their audiences by commanding high prices from advertisers. Advertisers of this era paid per thousand impressions despite not knowing the actual effects of their adverts on the viewers.

Early websites experimented with selling ads on a similar basis as traditional publishers, but quickly learned that it was not the number of impressions that mattered but rather the clicks which has become the new currency of the digital realm.

When Google announced in early 2002 that advertisers on their search engine would only pay for clicks and no longer the impressions, some in the industry doubted that their revolutionary revenue model would be sustainable. Yet over the past two decades, Google has become one of the most successful advertising platforms in the world.

Enter Fake News

Fake news draws the attention of the public and an analysis by Soroush Vosoughi at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab of posts on Twitter by three million people between 2006 and 2017 shows that fake news spreads six times faster than the truth on social media. As previously mentioned, the traffic generated on the websites translates to more clicks which in turn rakes in more ad-tech dollars. Basically, the money comes from ads, provided by the self-service ad-tech of companies such as Google and Facebook.

This really gained prominence and became “Mr. Orange Man with the Toupee” favorite slogan in the lead up to the 2016 election and social media was the primary platform for propagating it. ‘Another day, another Trump tweet’ became the norm and being the spotlight lover that he is, he certainly put on a show for those of us whose lives were not directly impacted by the drama that was unfolding. Russia also allegedly went all out to interfere with the 2016 election by probing state voter databases for insecurities; hacking the Hillary Clinton campaign, released politically damaging information on the internet; spread propaganda on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram to name a few critical incidents. Hence, voters were being influenced by the daily barrage of fake news that were being posted online but our focus here is on the ‘money’.

So… how much are we talking about?

The non-profit Global Disinformation Index published a study based on a sample of about 20,000 websites that have been found by PolitiFact and others to publish misinformation. The survey discovered that ad-techs spend about $235 million annually by running ads on such sites. The Index also stated in a different report that fake news websites that originated from Europe earn around $75m of advertising a year, majority of which are placed by Google.

The most common source is Google’s own AdSense, which gives these publishers a few cents each time someone clicks and views an ad on their site. One Facebook fake news writer told The Washington Post that they make around $10,000 a month. While BuzzFeed also reported on some Macedonian teenagers who successfully make around $5,000 each month.

Some fake news websites are easy to spot, with blatant misspellings, poor grammar, or ugly design. However, others are going to great lengths to blend in and actually compete with major, existing media outlets. For example, The Washington Post points out that abcnews.com.co is a complete ripoff of the real ABC News. Turns out this investment in quality pays off, to the tune of over $500,000… for fake news.

Conclusion

Considering all that transpired in the last election, it would be very interesting to see just how the 2020 election pans out and how much of a role fake news and propaganda will play this time around. Regardless of the level of interference and meddling that occurs, you had best believe some individuals would be smiling straight to the bank notwithstanding the outcome of the 2020 US election. *insert a Vlad’ Putin smirk here*!!!

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Fake News? Real Money though…

Written by Folajomi Agoro