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It's wild to discover that I'm not the only one with a 'WTF is going on at OZY?' folder in my notes and I'm enjoying seeing everyone open their's up.Permalink On twitter.com
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Anyway... for fun let's talk about some Ozy ad tech stuff! Ozy is repped by four different Google accounts... three DIRECT, one RESELLER. well-known.dev/resources/ads_txt/sites/ozy.comPermalink On twitter.com
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Ozy has just under 40 ad tech providers on each page. Only... where are the ads? Ozy doesn't host it's own video, as far as I can see *all* their on-site video is run through YouTube or off-site partners, including PBS, OWN and Hulu https://www.ozy (dot) com/pg/show/Permalink On twitter.com
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So... no ads running on Preroll. What are all these ad tech tags and scripts doing? Let's take an article featured in a recent newsletter... ozy.com/news-and-politics/former-cia-chief-sheds-light-on-huawei-arrest/91157/ There are no ads. Despite being repped by 4 google accounts... there is no GAM Google Tag on this page...Permalink On twitter.com
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Maybe it's on more recently updated articles? For a news site it is very difficult to fine a *recent* news story. Let's go to the sitemap! ozy.com/sitemap_index.xml Ok... trying to find a story from like this week.Permalink On twitter.com
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From August: no ads - https://www.ozy (dot) com/news-and-politics/who-are-you-calling-a-communist/440055/Permalink On twitter.com
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Ah, found their RSS feed for the news / politics section. https://www.ozy (dot) com/news-and-politics/feed/ Apparently the latest news/politics story is a news quiz. https://www.ozy (dot) com/qz/news-and-politics/the-ozy-news-quiz-173/442496/ Despite ad tech on page, no ads.Permalink On twitter.com
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Looks like the most recent news story in News Site Ozy dot com was published 8 days ago. https://www.ozy (dot) com/news-and-politics/who-are-the-highest-paid-public-workers-in-america/441540/ 23 ad trackers called.... no ads.Permalink On twitter.com
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Their most recent newsletter maybe links to something w/ads? https://www.ozy (dot) com/pg/newsletter/the-daily-dose/442377/ Well, it appears to have a baked in ad, but nothing running to make use of the on page trackers. Also, no links to individual stories on their domain.Permalink On twitter.com
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Maybe they are reporting on stuff like books to get affiliate links to earn revenue that way? https://www.ozy (dot) com/the-new-and-the-next/12-books-you-need-to-read-2/442687/ If they are I'm not seeing it. No affiliate links in this list of booksPermalink On twitter.com
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No affiliate links in this wellness article! https://www.ozy (dot) com/need-to-know/the-wonderful-world-of-wellness/442750/ But, we've got our first ads! They're run by Smart ad server not Google and while they seem to sync with bidders, it's entirely internal-link house ads.Permalink On twitter.com
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And when I refresh the page... the ads go away? Why?Permalink On twitter.com
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So now we can see an ad server and some ad slots, but they're not ever loading for me on 95% of my page loads... what's going on?Permalink On twitter.com
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In theory... they could be doing only direct sold ads... but how are they sustaining a *company* when there isn't a single direct sold ad showing up here? Is it really just off video partnerships they don't even own themselves?Permalink On twitter.com
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And here's the other really weird thing... not a single article I read looking through all these has non-spam comments. And they use Facebook comments which, if set up correctly, work with their Facebook page as well.Permalink On twitter.com
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I know they're all about Positive conversations... but you're telling me the home page stories, which clearly have bad moderation if they're letting spam like this come through and sit for a week, are getting no comments? Even ones criticizing state uni coach pay?Permalink On twitter.com
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Checked out The New and the Next RSS feed and found another ad - https://www.ozy (dot) com/the-new-and-the-next/feed/ But it's a house ad to a sponsored brand partnership https://www.ozy (dot) com/nsnss/?dclid=CPT24bftovMCFZTG4QodLiQNAA ...Permalink On twitter.com
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The main feature of that page btw is an embedded YouTube video. The video is *unlisted*, has only one thumb up, 24 views and *0* comments. youtube (dot) com/watch?v=KXJRBO7wmiQPermalink On twitter.com
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So, one last thing to check... SEM Rush, what's it's footprint for last month? semrush.com/analytics/overview/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ozy.com%2F&searchType=domain 242.3k in Organic Search Traffic, almost entirely US, mostly imgs 1.4m backlinks... via 29.27k domains 861 ads, across 545 sites... Many are for the 2020 festival though.Permalink On twitter.com
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Their top search term is for "masako katsura", but it looks like most of the placement stats are coming in on the image, of which their's is listed third.Permalink On twitter.com
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If you're curious, on the basis of search page performance, here's who SEM Rush thinks is their competitors.Permalink On twitter.com
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Anyway, dinner time, that's just a short dive into the inexplicable weirdness of Ozy I see when I wear my ad tech hat.Permalink On twitter.com
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Time for my own disclosure: I interviewed for a high up position at Ozy once a while back. I talked to the top level folks, my recollection was they seemed personally nice...Permalink On twitter.com
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then they asked me to examine the site and assess and I went through a much more in depth look (using nothing but the public site, no in-house data) and got a crazier version of the thread here, freaked out because it is *inexplicable*...Permalink On twitter.com
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And I was worried there might be something like... actually bad--not just ad tech weirdness bad--going on and I ghosted on the process because I didn't know what else to do when I realized nothing about the site made sense. Still, nothing does. Anyway, that's the disclosure.Permalink On twitter.com
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tl:dr; now you too can see what I saw which was the sort of layout of technology that doesn't make a lot of sense unless something real weird is going on somewhere.Permalink On twitter.com
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I don't know what weird thing is going on, but yeah, it still weirds me out.Permalink On twitter.com
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That feeling when you know for sure that you dodged a bullet. amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/09/30/media/ozy-work-culture/index.html?__twitter_impression=truePermalink On twitter.com
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This is prob for the best, but also I'm sad that this means we will likely never get the sort of full lawyer-involved investigation that will tell me wtf *exactly* went on at OZY. benyt/1444048250898685954On twitter.com
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