Extra, Extra, Read all about it – Net Native Targeted Ad Fat Cats To Start Paying Their Taxes!!!
This is such a juicy scoop ..it’s almost too good to be true and will likely not be once the supreme leaders of cyberspace get their legal pit bulls involved. But for now…
It took some Maryland lawmakers to muster up the chutzpah and float legislation that would impose a Digital Ad Tax on companies that profit by collecting data from consumers. And NO, consumers haven’t “opted in”, they’ve been resigned to a status quo they don’t like; forced to hand over way more information about them than is necessary to improve service, as a condition of using a service. The proposal would levy as much as a 10% tax on companies earning over $100 Million in revenue. I think this is a splendid idea. To be clear, we are talking about the worst type of advertising available, Online Behavioral tracking Banner ads, a large sector of the online ad industry ($100B according to eMarketer) which has marketers wholly confused between cheap and effective (and at 5 clicks in 10,000 not even efficient). A trade group representing Maryland’s news organizations warned that – despite the exemption for companies with less than $100 million in global ad revenue – the bill could potentially impact newspapers and other media companies that publish digital ads and rely on advertising to support newsgathering. Fine – make it a “G.A.F. Tax” on Google, Amazon and Facebook only, whose platforms collectively absorb close to 90 cents of every digital ad dollar. We all pay our taxes… except for Amazon actually which made $13 Billion in profit last year and paid their fair share … a whopping 1.2%! Looks like somebody forgot to grease Senate President Bill Ferguson, MY FAVORITE MILLENIAL, who is pitching the reform. The Association of National Advertisers called the proposal “one of the most serious threats to advertising in the United States that we have encountered in decades.” Right. OR it’s a cure for the scourge of tracking and banner blindness. With revenue from the G.A.F Tax, Baltimore can build beautiful modern new schools. We’d be tracked less. Shown more Brand advertisements that didn’t penetrate the internet/brain barrier. See less crap infested screens. Increase load times. Save batteries. A premium would be placed on creating great ads instead of creatively positioning the benefits of targeted ones. We ALL win.
Oh, all of us except for Mark, Sergey and Bozos, who would each have to build 1 less yacht the size of a Carnival cruise liner…
