Every tech company trying to add on ad tech has to remember to take bullshit and fraud into account

Here's the thing about every time companies like Netflix launch an ad business. Executives always waaaaaaay overestimate how much money they can make and how fast and because ad tech is filled with frauds they all nod and say 'yeah, great we can do that'.

They compare with other companies not realizing all their numbers are bullshit. So when they look at their own internal numbers without a bullshit filter (because they're new at this and haven't learned to apply it yet) they end up very disappointed.

I've heard this happening in a bunch of places but it did (sorta) happen to me once. Big tech company wanted me to help them launch programmatic and I asked how much money they expected in the first year and when they told me the number I couldn't help but bust out laughing.

I feel a little bad about it, but I literally laughed in the recruiters face. He told me all about their direct sales success, and their plans for AI tagging, etc, etc.... all totally detached from reality prob pitched by some consultant to an exec.

I told him 'if you cut your expectations in half maybe they're realistic at that point. If your execs do that, call me back. But if anyone you interview promises you those numbers, they're either lying or unqualified.'

Anyway, they didn't call me back, but they did hire someone to start up their programmatic biz. It extremely under-performed and they just ended up shutting down the whole unit, turning off programmatic entirely, like 2ish years later. I was right.

The word is that basically happened with Verizon and AT&T. They had some big metric, the ad tech firms they purchased lied about what it was because that's industry standard behavior, and when meticulous qualified people started looking at the tech it didn't add up.

Here's my tip to any exec who thinks they know ad tech. Whatever number a consultant or ad tech firm says they are going to For Sure get you when you are starting from zero, cut it in half. That's about the amount of total BS flowing in the pipes.

The truth is that you can make money in digital advertising and even in programmatic but:

1. don't trust consultants.
2. don't trust your partners.
3. set your expectations way lower than the market indicates.
4. Plan to build slowly, at a loss, for at least a year.
5. Also, try and keep it in house. Better to have the true bad news instead of some shiny lies.

I think Netflix could have a very successful profitable ad biz. But it needs to set lower expectations on basically every level.

See: also, also, also and previously.