Harpoon Attribution

19th century whalers had a particular question to answer: when a whale dies, which harpoon delivered the fatal blow? That person requires attribution in order to stake their claim. At Harvard Business School, Thales Teixeira and David Bell compare this practice to online advertising strategies.

Relevant links:

• Who Owns the Whale? - Thales S. Teixeira and David E. Bell, April 2015

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=49147 

• Why Harvard Business School teaches students about whaling - Oliver Staley, June 2016

https://qz.com/707832/why-harvard-business-school-teaches-students-about-whaling/

The comparison here is that when a person buys a product, advertisers want to know whether or not their work influenced that purchase. The advertisement that delivered the “fatal blow” gets the credit. 

“Online advertising isn’t as violent as whaling, but the attribution problems can be as complex. If a shopper learns about a product from an ad on one site, but makes a purchase based on one seen on another, which site should get credit? It’s particular a problem in mobile advertising, where shoppers are exposed to ads, but less likely to make major purchases on their phones.” (Stately 2016)

We contend that online advertising is just as dangerous and problematic as whaling, and the fuzzy logic of harpoon attribution is a contributing factor. These data seem like they’re capturing information, but they’re really not. It’s so hard to tie the advertisement of a brand to the purchase of a product that it’s generally not required; instead, ad campaigns just insist upon being seen. Eyeballs are considered inventory. By prioritizing that metric, we encourage ads to be invasive and annoying. 

This issue becomes compounded by market capture and antitrust issues endemic to the social media space. Facebook is both a customer with the advertising market, and the body which assess the value of advertising stock. They sell n number of CPMs to advertisers, and also build and ajuditcate the technology which reports to advertisers the number of CPMs they’ve received. This clear conflict of interest has resulted in the disastrous decision-making around reallocation of resources during the growth of digital news vehicles.