INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Thank you for welcoming me into you inbox yet again.
Last week, I talked about Juul unraveling mission statement and the highly-valued
startup new Big Tobacco CEO
I got some great email responses and plenty of a pro-Juul DMs.
If you&re reading this on the TechCrunch site, you can get this in your inbox
here, and follow my tweets here.
The big story
This section might slowly turn into my grievance of the week, but this week the tale isn''t
a screed against Juul, it a prolonged eye roll after the merger of two adtech companies responsible for pumping the internet full of
garbage.
Taboola and Outbrain have merged forming a $2 billion adtech giant
Those startup names likely don''t mean much to you, but they&re both responsible for a lot of the publishing world junkiest ad units.
You&ve
You&ve tried not to see them.
Taboola and Outbrain merge .
‘YOU&LL NEVER GUESS WHAT HAPPENED NEXT& https://t.co/5DaTm5E6aQ
mdash; Ross Caveille (@rcaveille) October 3, 2019
These startups grew
their networks by sending traffic from one partner to another and incentivizing the flow of more traffic through them.
By adding a bit of
Javascript, publications were able to bring in traffic and more importantly effortless cash
It been an irresistible sell to plenty of publishers, but it also been an eyesore for many of them and a race to the bottom in terms of
selling the most salacious headlines
This has brought in revenues to publications that aren''t afraid to sell a bit of
Being an adtech &giant& is pretty relative these days
Taking on Google and Facebook overwhelming ad duopoly is an incredibly noble goal — I would love for a true competitor to emerge — but I
have very little faith that a frankensteined fusion of these two crap ad companies is going to do much to halt a war path, I hope someone
else can find a path.
Taboola has pulled its content widget from InfoWars
A reminder that Taboola, Outbrain, et al
are part of the growing conspiracy theory problem
Some examples of Clinton propaganda on Taboola, etc
around the US election https://t.co/d80ij6xrIv pic.twitter.com/GiZgeuPApb
mdash; James Temperton (@jtemperton) February 27, 2018
Send me
feedbackon Twitter@lucasmtnyor emaillucas@techcrunch.com
On to the rest of the week news.
Trends of the week
Here are a few big news
items from big companies, with green links to all the sweet, sweet added context:
Microsoft dual screen unveil
Microsoft dove headfirst into
dual-screen folding displays at its hardware event this week
Take a peek at the Neo and Duo
Read more here.
Tesla buys a startup
Tesla has been arranging its efforts around robo taxies and its now making some acquisitions to bolster
See them all here.
GAFA Gaffes
How did the top tech companies screw up this week? This clearly needs its own section, in order of
badness:
Facebook news can''t be trusted:[Facebook leads in news consumption among social feeds, but most don''t trust it]
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