September 10, 2024 • 50 mins
Ever wondered how to protect yourself from online scams while keeping advertisers honest? This episode is a must-listen as we welcome Nandini Jammi from Check My Ads, back on the podcast, after almost four years since her first appearance. Check My Ads is the pioneering agency fighting against fraudulent advertisers, right-wing disinformation and tackling online scams.
We promise you'll walk away with a deep understanding of how business ethics and company values can shape the future of social media marketing schemes.
Don't buy anything off Twitter/X. Pinky promise?
🎬 You can watch the video of this episode on the Life on Mars podcast website: https://podcast.marsbased.com/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (00:01):
Hello everybody, Alex from Life on
Mars, here and in this episodewe bring you Nandini Jammi, who
is a familiar face to manybecause, if you follow me on
social media, that's one of theaccounts and personalities I
retweet the most and I'm in aweof her work and her agency's
work.
Check my ads, which is acompany I deeply admire because
(00:22):
they are doing a great kickassjob at dismantling and
disfunding I don't know ifthat's even a word right-wing
advertisers and people whopretend to be other brands,
basically companiesimpersonating other companies
and deceiving people and tryingto rip off money from
(00:42):
not-so-tech-savvy people, or,you know, all these other giant
scammy schemes on the internet.
And so in this episode wediscuss how to do that from the
perspective of a small agency.
When they were on the podcast,when she was on the podcast a
couple of years back, she wasjust starting this venture.
This time around, she's almost20 people in the company.
(01:04):
This venture this time around,she's almost 20 people in the
company.
We talk about business ethics,we talk about principles,
company values, we talk aboutthe exposure and social media.
We talk about the future ofthese social media and marketing
schemes.
And how can we avoid and howcan we prevent these kind of
scams.
And so, without further ado, letme introduce you to Nandini
Jammi.
(01:25):
Let's go! Nice.
All right, Good morning overthere.
How are you doing?
Nandini Jammi (01:31):
Good morning to you, alex, it is morning.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (01:34):
You're making an exception for us
because it's early morning inthe US and it's not for us.
Yeah, thank you for that.
Nandini Jammi (01:43):
I don't like to talk to people before 10 am, but
here we are.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (01:47):
I don't like to talk to people.
I'm also making an exception,so we're even.
Nandini Jammi (01:52):
Oh yeah, no, we're totally even.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (01:55):
How about this podcast thing?
I mean you promised to bring onthe Check my Ads podcast, but
it seems like it's a projectthat you keep postponing, and
that would be a podcast I'ddefinitely like to check out and
listen to actively, because youknow you produce so much great
stuff that probably you've gotlots of content every week.
Tell me more about that.
Nandini Jammi (02:17):
Oh gosh, starting off with the hardball.
Okay, well, it's true.
A few years ago, we intended tostart a podcast.
In fact, starting a podcast wasthe impetus for us to start
Check my Ads.
But things got in the way right.
Life got in the way around 10,12 people and I have some of the
(02:50):
smartest people that I get tocall my coworkers now, and the
time has never been better toget these ladies on a call.
We're a lot of ladies at thiscompany.
So it's coming.
We're going to be doing it.
In fact, we are starting offsmall and easy with a LinkedIn
live.
We're doing our first LinkedInlive this week, in two days.
(03:11):
No, today's Wednesday in oneday.
And, yeah, I think peopleshould be excited to hear what
we have to say about a lot ofthings that are going on in ad
tech.
I think people are hungry for areal, independent, honest, raw
(03:32):
voice on the issues that we talkabout, that a lot of people are
thinking about, so I'm excitedto get that started.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (03:41):
I don't know if we actually, to my
recollection, we didn't talkabout the podcast on the episode
we recorded in early 2021.
You started TechMads in 2020,if I'm not mistaken, I think
those were the early days of thecompany, when we had the
conversation with our friend,Josh Feldberg on this podcast,
(04:05):
and I remember that you had someideas hey, how do we break into
this overcrowded world?
Ad talk is so vast.
The majority of people in thissector are marketers, Therefore,
everything is so growth hack.
It's not even funny.
It's really hard to get intothis business, right.
Luckily, you had priorexperience in this and, of
(04:27):
course, you know how to do it.
So that brings me to my sort offirst question, which is we
like small independent companies.
We often struggle to get ourvoices heard right, and that's
something you shared in socialmedia.
Sometimes you know you sharesomething and people might
congratulate you on, or theydon't believe it's really you,
(04:50):
right, it's?
Oh, I did this Like wait, youand who else right you and how
many people more?
And did you partner with abigger company?
How did you accomplish thisalone, right?
And so that's something that Iparticularly share with you, and
by creating a podcast.
Maybe that's the best way tocreate a voice or like a bigger
(05:10):
channel for you.
So I don't know if that's alongthe lines of the things that
you were thinking.
Nandini Jammi (05:15):
Yes, it is.
In fact, there's just so muchthat happens in any given week
that I feel like writing hasalways been my medium for
expressing myself justpersonally.
But there's so much more to besaid and I think people need to
(05:36):
hear our voices, so podcastingis a great way to do that.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (05:40):
Exactly .
I mean, there are so many bigthings that you have
accomplished lately.
One of the things I rememberexchanging on Twitter about was
that issue that, for instance,mark Cuban and Shark Tank had
with some of their items beingcounterfeited or sold with their
image illegally online.
(06:01):
That's one of the many thingsyou do, but it's interesting to
see how a company that eats only10 people and you probably had
big clients from the get-gobecause of previous experiences
and I will be digging deeper onthat, but if I were in your
position, I would be havingdifficulties explaining that.
(06:24):
Oh yeah, we work for Mark Cubanand only 10 people, like he's
probably have 10 people in hisown house.
You know doing stuff for him.
So how did you usually comeacross this kind of deal flow
and it's a recommendation, it'salready branding.
Nandini Jammi (06:39):
Well, so I need to just clarify that we're not a
for-profit company, so we don'twork for anybody.
We don't have any clients.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (06:46):
Okay, good point.
Nandini Jammi (06:47):
So Check my Ads is a nonprofit.
We're the digital advertisingwatchdog.
We are an independentorganization.
We don't take any money fromany of the big tech companies,
or just tech companies ingeneral, because those are the
folks that we are watching andwhose lives we are working hard
to make health.
So the reason we're a nonprofitis because we we will for a lot
(07:14):
of reasons, but one of thosereasons is to allow us to pull
in the public and to to do truepublic interest work that
benefit everybody.
So the way that Mark Cuban, likeMark Cuban, reaching out to us
(07:35):
was just like an interesting andrandom thing.
It came at an interesting timefor me personally, because so
here's what happened In Novemberof this past year um, he
reached out to me over dms tosay that he was dealing with an
issue on, particularly on google, with uh, with with essentially
(08:02):
shark, like fake shark Tankketo gummies.
So basically, these weight lossgummies all over the internet
that were claiming to beaffiliated with or endorsed by
Shark Tank and or Mark Cubanpersonally.
And this was a problem becauseShark Tank viewers, especially
(08:23):
older viewers, believe what theysee online and were falling for
the scam and essentially beingroped into making monthly
payments for some, you know,garbage product that doesn't
work or just never comes.
So he said he'd reached out toGoogle many times and had not
(08:44):
made any progress with them.
So he was contacting us to seeif there was something that we
could do.
Now this actually falls outsideof the purview of what Check my
Ads was.
Last year we were working on.
Our tagline on our website wascutting disinformation off at
the source.
So this isn't disinformation.
This is somebody having aproblem with scammers.
(09:07):
It's like a copyright issue.
But when that issue came to me,came to my attention, I started
thinking about how well Istarted to pay.
First of all, I started to paymore attention to these small
scale scams, like in the daysafter I received that message
and one, uh one ad that I cameacross while I was on YouTube
(09:31):
looking at a you know some kindof a recipe, I got an ad for a
Kelly Clarkson endorsed ketogummy.
So I clicked on that and ittook me to a website that looked
exactly like a news site, likea CBS news site, and it claimed
that Kelly Clarkson had gone on,I think the Today Show, and
(09:52):
said she lost a ton of weightbecause of keto gummies, and
here is your link to buy themyourself and that got me
thinking.
It made me realize that thesesmall-scale scams are using the
same tools that anybody can useto scam people or trick people
(10:15):
or manipulate people intobelieving anything, and so that
kind of helped me realize thatwe're working on, even like the
scope of our work needs to bebigger.
But at that time I saw anopportunity.
When Mark reached out, I saw anopportunity to try something new
, and so what we did at thattime was we agreed to help them
(10:37):
out.
We, uh, we got together, uh, um, we, we, we wrote a couple, we
wrote an article bringingattention to the issue.
We will actually, even beforewe did that, we actually reached
out to.
We used Google's own mechanismsfor reporting fake ads and scam
ads and did not hear back.
(10:57):
So using their normaldesignated method didn't work
for us, even though this was anopen and shut case.
So after that, we decided toescalate.
The way we did that was bywriting a piece on it.
We made a TikTok on it.
We said that this is veryclearly a scam and that if
(11:20):
they're not going to take theirregular mechanism seriously,
we're going to have to escalateby reaching out to the global VP
of ads at Google, a man namedDan Taylor, and we published an
email address and asked ourfollowers to email him and make
this a problem for him.
(11:51):
Google ads updated their policyspecifically to to uh, I don't
have the language in front of me, but it is to ban scammers who
impersonate people or businessesto sell a fake thing Like it
was.
It was the exact thing that wewere asking them to do.
Now one could argue and thatperson would be me that these
policies don't really matter,and what matters is enforcement,
(12:14):
because policies like thisalready exist under Google's
current or previous iteration oftheir, of their policy.
But it matters because thesepeople listened to us.
It was clear that we causedthem some distress or some level
of stress, and that I mean Idon't know what Mark was able to
do on his end with the workthat we were doing, how he might
(12:37):
have been leveraging it, but wewere able to get that result
and those Shark Tank gummy adsare gone Not all of them, as it
turns out, just the ones that wespecifically highlighted in our
article.
So there's a lot more work tobe done, but that was a very key
move for us and for Google, away for us to sort of exercise
(13:03):
our power and get something bigdone.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (13:08):
I remember the case.
I don't remember the specificsand I don't remember whether the
content of those speeches wasonly text and image, but one
would think that nowadays it'sgetting even more sophisticated
to impersonate somebody elsebecause they can use fake video,
fake ai, right, so the um likedeep fakes to generate somebody
like kelly clarkson, somebodyelse saying, yeah, I actually
(13:31):
did that, generate the video, itlooks fucking real.
Right, you can have like whoeveryou wanted to to say some
things that never happen andit's more sophisticated and and
look without video.
I think I read an article theother day that 97% of the news
that are shared on Facebook byelderly people are complete fake
(13:52):
and utter garbage.
Right, so that's without video.
That's usually that kind of youknow, super dodgy news site
that is super clickbaity andclaims false theories and
conspiranoia and stuff like that.
So it's already so easy totrick elderly and some other
demographics of people to do thewrong thing.
(14:13):
One can only imagine what isthe power behind video.
So how are you envisioning thisis going to affect the industry
even farther, because videojust makes it all the more
complicated to detect nowadays.
Nandini Jammi (14:27):
Well, I think the proliferation of fake and
falsely AI-generated junk isreally turbocharging the supply
of crap out there.
But I think what's important isto focus on policy and
(14:47):
enforcement, the technology thatis.
There's always going to be newtechnology and new ways to take
advantage of an old problem, butit is up to the companies to
enforce that, and that's what westay focused on.
(15:08):
This enforcement is not just toprotect users, who might be
duped into reading or buyingcertain things, but it is also
to protect advertisers, becausenot only do their ads end up on
(15:29):
some of this junk supply thatcould be run by God knows who,
but also, when you have scammersrunning ads alongside a
reputable company, then thevalue of the company's ad goes
down as well, because now peopledon't know what's real, and
(15:51):
that matters.
I mean, I, just before Markcontacted me, I had my own run
in with a scam.
I was trying to buy a pair ofhokas, which is a pair of
sneakers that you know.
I did a Google search online.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (16:07):
I really needed a new pair of
sneakers because mine werefalling apart.
Nandini Jammi (16:09):
So I was kind of in a rush and I was doing this
really late at night when I wassleepy and I I, you know I typed
in hokas into Google and Googlesearch suggestions suggested
hokas, official website, which Iclicked.
And then I clicked on the firstlink that I saw, assuming that
that would be the HOKA's website.
It was hokasuscom.
(16:32):
So I clicked on that and I waslike whoa, there's a crazy deal
going on today.
It was like two for 60, two for70 or something, and these
shoes are normally 140 bucks ormore.
And I was like, boy, I bettertake advantage of this deal
before it goes away.
I mean, like I had this scriptgoing on in my head like, of
course, of course, this is thereal thing.
So I went through a very oddcheckout process that I should
(16:56):
have flagged, but I was so tiredand I ended up buying you know,
buying a pair of shoes.
But I was so tired and I endedup buying you know, buying a
pair of shoes.
And and then I got an invoicefrom like some random company in
my PayPal and I was like, ohboy, I've been scammed.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (17:09):
I should have known but I didn't.
Nandini Jammi (17:11):
That's the thing, and if it could happen to me,
it could happen to anybody.
Um, so I I, you know.
I immediately went in and got arefund.
I reported it.
I got a refund from PayPal.
I put my story online andsomeone actually went ahead and
reported them to the domainregistrar, who killed off the
(17:34):
site and I was able to kind ofaddress my problem.
But this is rampant online andthis is what we have to address,
because what we're seeing hereis a decline of trust online,
because I never went and boughta pair of hokas after all this
happened.
I just went to the store and Ibought a pair of shoes because
it felt like too much trouble.
(17:54):
And if we cannot have trustonline, then what are we doing?
Who does that benefit?
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (18:02):
not have trust online.
Then what are we doing?
Who does that benefit?
You know and that happened toyou that you're tech savvy and
I've also fallen for certainscams online.
I'm like as tech savvy asanybody else, but the thing is
like sometimes they're so legitor they are, you know, you can
receive them over SMS, likeright now, as we were talking, I
just received an SMS from thelocal post service saying like,
oh, I've got a package I didn'tpay for because it was some kind
(18:25):
of like extra fee and somewhereelse that was unpaid.
And I was like, yeah, but whyis the link not HTTPS and why
then, when I hover on it, thenit actually redirects me to
somewhere else, somewhere else.
So I know I've got the, I'vegot the, the let's say the
(18:46):
theory, and I've got also thepractice, because I've fallen
for certain of these things inthe past.
But, like most people don't,most people will fall for this
again and again and again.
I find interesting this, thisidea of like we are losing trust
in the web, but then again, Ithink that's something that
Google got coming because, youknow, essentially Google served
you as this official page onlike on the first, you know,
(19:07):
first result, or maybe the firstpage of results, and it was a
totally scammy site.
But, like, then again, it's acompany that allows you to
advertise for the name ofsomebody else, like somebody
else's company.
Like I say, I wanted to promotemy conference.
I would write you know WebSummit better than Web Summit?
(19:28):
Or you look for Web Summit,then my conference appears there
.
How is that even legal, youknow?
So that's something that justbuckles my mind all the time.
Nandini Jammi (19:41):
I remember when I ran a google ads campaign for
my company and we had a googleads rep, like someone who was
teaching me how to use google,google ads, and he was, like
you're gonna have to put yourcompany name as one of the
keywords that you run ads on.
I was like, why would I do that?
He's like well, because otherpeople will take it if you don't
(20:02):
.
I was like, so I'm paying tohave my company come up on my
search, like when specificallysomeone looks up my company, I
still have to pay you.
And that's one of many thingsthat never made sense to me.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (20:18):
So you pay for your domain, by the way,
which is a way to get yourpresence online, but then you
have, on top of that, to pay forthe ads.
Nandini Jammi (20:28):
Oh, it's just a couple cents.
It's not very expensive.
Blah, blah, blah.
I mean I shouldn't be payinganything.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (20:34):
That doesn't guarantee anything,
because even if you pay for it,somebody outbids you.
They will win the placement,right.
I don't know if that's how itworks exactly, but I think they
can outbid you.
Yeah, they can outbid you.
Nandini Jammi (20:49):
I think the thing that is illegal is that you
can't put the name of yourcompetitor in the ad, or
something like that.
There's like one rule that youcan't break something like that.
There's like one rule that youcan't read.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (21:00):
No, that one isn't.
Because I remember like we, fora client or two, we're using
Monday or ClickUp, one of thesecompanies.
I think it was Monday and I wasresearching something I said I
wanted to go on and download itand the first thing I got or I
wanted to download no that now.
I remember I wanted to downloadBasecamp because that was the
tool that we were using and offthe sudden, I got served all of
(21:23):
these ads on Monday, and notonly was Monday on top of the
results, but they had articlespromoted saying Monday is better
than Basecamp.
I'm like I'm sure thisshouldn't be illegal.
So I spoke on Twitter, Iremember, and I got like I think
they removed the content aswell.
Twitter, I remember, and I gotlike I think they removed the
content as well.
I'm like, well, they had towait until somebody made a thing
(21:45):
out of it to remove it.
But why would Google allow that?
They don't give a flying fact,I assume like they're too busy
with other things, but thenagain they are allowing these
things to happen.
So I don't know if they're toobusy or they're just like
stiffening off money into theeconomy just because they're
allowing this and it's just tooprofitable.
Nandini Jammi (22:11):
And if nobody complains, I don't know.
I mean, that's what I would bedoing if I was an evil Google.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (22:16):
VP why?
Nandini Jammi (22:16):
would I do anything else?
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (22:23):
Exactly do anything else, exactly, then
then my, my, the next thing islike so these, these things are
happening and I, I really likethe, the idea of the social
justice that you areimplementing at check my ads,
because for me it is a way tocompensate the, the, the, the,
the exaggerated power thesecompanies have, that, unless you
do a really good campaign on PRand then something goes viral,
(22:45):
they don't fucking do anythingabout some of the injustices,
right?
I just heard today my sisterwent on the honeymoon flight and
I don't know, maybe I shouldhave said somebody else I'm
going to blip this out, probably, but anyway.
So somebody got into a planeand they bought the seats
together with a kid in themiddle, and all of that because
they wanted to be together, afamily going on honeymoon and
whatnot.
And so it turns out, thecompany, they downsized the
(23:08):
plane for whatever reason, andthey just put people the three
of them in separate seats,notwithstanding the fact that
one of them is a toddler, right,right and so, and they did know
it was a toddler because theypreviously they had relocated
them somewhere else because theycouldn't see it in an emergency
seat because, uh, there is atoddler.
So they knew that and in spiteof that, they just relocated him
(23:31):
in line 27, maybe, right?
So something like that.
And they're like well, you canfile a complaint, but nothing,
nobody's going to move a fingerfor that, unless you do
something that goes viral onTikTok or Instagram or social
media, right?
So most people don't have thispower.
So all the more important thatpeople like you exist to do like
(23:52):
that.
So how can people reach out toyou in case they find this kind
of illicit practices ordownright illegal things?
Nandini Jammi (24:03):
Well, you can find us at checkmyadsorg.
We have just rebranded so youcan enjoy our beautiful new
colors and website.
And we are active on all thesocials.
And I'm the most active now onLinkedIn, believe it or not,
(24:25):
where I've had to sort of runoff to after Twitter went down.
So still on Twitter or X, butthe audience that I'm most
interested in lives on LinkedIn,so therefore, so do I.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (24:42):
But how do you deal with the selection
of projects?
Because I assume that tons ofpeople are contacting you.
There's tons of interestingprojects you can share a peek
from.
So if they're kind of like awaiting list, or how do you
usually operate with the dealflow that you get?
Nandini Jammi (24:55):
We have a roadmap , we have a strategy and a
playbook and we have a vision ofwhat we would like to achieve.
And so we we, at this time ofour organization we are growing
the way we are expanding the waythat we look at the problem.
(25:17):
So in the last yearparticularly, we saw that.
We saw that talking aboutdisinformation, that focusing on
disinformation as our windowinto the world of ad tech was
not adequate, because there isso much that is happening in the
(25:40):
world of digital advertisingthat we want to address that is
not directly related todisinformation but that feeds
into that world.
So issues like ad fraud, oreven the word ad fraud, is so
(26:01):
big.
You know, um, but just you knowwe.
We follow the work of a companycalled analytics and, uh, that
company came out with all thesereally big stories last year
about how YouTube was defraudingits customers out of billions
of dollars through um, you know,informing them, reporting that
(26:21):
they had paid for premium adsbut actually they were garbage
ads and they were running in thecorners of people's browsers or
they weren't being seen or theywere being autoplayed.
This is all a form of fraud foradvertisers because they paid
more money to ensure that theirads ended up on youtubecom and
ran in front of people, ensurethat their ads ended up on
(26:45):
YouTubecom and ran in front ofpeople.
But one of the sort of sideissues that came up with this
was that YouTube was running adson, more ads on something
called search partner network,which is third party websites
off of YouTube properties, sooff of YouTubecom, off of the
YouTube app, third partywebsites that are supposed to be
(27:06):
carefully vetted and brand safe, and what we found was that
search partner network includedthings like um, rumble video,
which hosts all of the bannedcharacters uh, you know all the
peanut gallery of hate, hatemerchants and and disinfo,
(27:30):
disinfo people and, um, someiranian sanctioned websites I
think I might be getting thisconfused with a different report
but like just a bunch of stuffthat we should not be
advertising, shouldn't berunning their ads on, and so
this ad fraud issue and thisdisinfo issue kind of merge here
.
But if we want to talk aboutthis in an effective way, we
(27:52):
need to.
We need to step back and lookat the bigger picture, and so
one of the things that we didthis year is our.
We changed our tagline.
So our tagline now and thefocus of our work has shifted.
It hasn't changed, it hasshifted.
We're simply moving back back astep.
(28:15):
So we're now talking about theinternet that we deserve, free
from scams, lies andmanipulation, because, as I said
earlier with the Mark Cubanexample, that set of tools that
the scammers were using tomisinform people about Shark
Tank, keto gummies are the sametools that propagandists can use
(28:40):
to throw an election, and sothe problem really comes back
down to the tools, to theproducts, to the digital
advertising industry, and so weneed to talk about it in a much
bigger way, and if we want to beeffective, we need to look at
the full picture, address thefull picture, and that means not
(29:00):
just doing the work that I havebeen you know that I began
doing in 2016, which is callingout advertisers, calling out ad
tech companies, but we're alsolooking at research, our own,
developing our own research tobetter understand and uncover
issues and conflicts of interestin the industry.
But we're also looking at policy, and so now we've grown to a
(29:23):
point where we are pursuingpolicy, like actual laws that we
can put in place to help ensureregulation in this industry.
So to us, this is sort of athree-prong or three-pillar
project now and we are settingour sights on fixing the system
(29:48):
rather than just fixing smallissues that come up.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (29:54):
No, and that's super interesting
because there's so many angles.
You know cybersecurity can gowe could talk about, you know
the B2C aspect of how people arebeing ripped off and scammed by
these kind of companies.
But B2B, when it comes to like,you know cybersecurity can go
we could talk about.
You know the B2C aspect of howpeople are being ripped off and
scammed by these kinds ofcompanies.
But B2B, when it comes to like.
You know the image of yourcompany's advertising,
supposedly on YouTube or onTwitter for that matter, because
I think that's something thatwe see every day.
And then the ad appears afteryou know a white nationalist
(30:19):
tweet, or on the account of, orbeing promoted next to people
like Andrew Tate or somethinglike that.
So it's like you really don'twant to be there.
But as a company, ultimately youdon't have the control.
I think on Google you have gotmore control, but on Twitter not
as much.
And then again, most of thetimes there are intermediaries
in this, like there are agencieswho manage this for you.
(30:40):
So therefore, they delegate allof the risk.
The brands delegate all of therisk.
They're like oh, I hiredsomebody and so they can always
put the blame on that.
So do usually brands own up totheir own mistakes, or do they
just blame it on the agencydoing that work for them?
Nandini Jammi (31:00):
uh, do brands own up to their own mistakes?
I mean, I mean a lot of themrun it in-house, right.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (31:07):
But I guess somebody couldn't say like
, oh, that was the company Ihired to to run my ads, for
instance, right, yeah I mean.
Nandini Jammi (31:13):
A lot of times it comes down to the third party.
Obviously nobody wants to takeblame um but yeah we, we know
that.
You know, a couple ago I waslooking at ads on Steve Bannon's
War Room and I was coming upwith Volvo and Audi and Etsy and
Procter Gamble brands and thoseguys are not running their own
(31:37):
ads, they've handed that stuffover to agencies to do it for
them, that stuff over toagencies to do it for them, and
I don't know about taking theblame, but certainly they looked
into it and they tried to, Ithink, do their best to remove
the ads from that channel.
The fact is that advertisersstill don't know, as you just
(32:01):
just said, they don't haveinsight or visibility into where
their ads are running, andoften this is because not often
this is always because ad techvendors that they rely on to run
their ads refuse to or declineor gaslight even them into not
seeing them, into not seeingtrue, raw reports on their own
(32:33):
ad placements.
They actively work to keep themfrom seeing that information,
and so the problem really hereis this relationship.
It's not necessarily the tech,it's not necessarily anything
outside of just a pure powerplay, and so that power play is
what we need to address, and wealso need advertisers to step up
(32:55):
and know that it is part oftheir responsibility as stewards
of their brand to insist thatthey know where their ads are
running, because they spend alot of time and a lot of money
and a lot of effort making surethat they're building brands
that people trust, that peopleare loyal to, and the way that
(33:15):
you get that is by showing up inthe right places and in the
right way yeah, and exactly oneof the things that like pissed
me off.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (33:24):
A few months ago I remember I was on
Twitter and I had received thiskind of scam of buy this crypto
coin, like this meme coin orsomething buy a local
kindergarten from here inBarcelona.
I'm like, wait, wait a minute.
And it was an advertise, right,so it was an ad.
So, technically, somebodyeither hacked the kindergarten
(33:45):
Twitter account and posted thisbuy Solana or something like
that advertisement, or that wasjust Twitter basically making
app ads.
I don't know, because actuallyI went into the.
I remember screenshotting thisbecause I went into the account
and they had legit posts andthey had legit content.
(34:06):
So I don't know if it was.
Maybe it was something builtinto the system that they could
just impersonate somebody elseto make up fake accounts or fake
advertisements.
I don't know what happened there, but the account didn't look
compromised and that looked likedodgy as fuck.
In this case, how do you, inthis case, like how do you
actually go about it?
How do you, how do you telllike the entire not only the
(34:28):
entire platform is rigged, butlike the company cannot see I'm
pretty sure they couldn't seethis ad because the account was
not compromised.
How do you tell them look,you're actually publishing this
or somebody is publishing it inyour name.
It's got to be Twitter, becausenobody else has got access to
your account, right?
So I don't know, probablyTwitter operates differently,
(34:49):
but I think that was a reallyextreme and obscene usage of
these shady techniques.
So that's something that, as abrand, you can never know who
else is taking care, sorry, istaking over your information and
just using your image in someplace that you actually don't
control.
They were active on Twitter.
Nandini Jammi (35:10):
That's pretty illegal.
Yeah, you can't justimpersonate other brands.
Well, I mean, I'm certainly.
I don't think there's any pointreporting it to X, because they
don't really give a shit it toX because they don't really give
a shit.
But but I'll tell you who wecan target and who we are
targeting.
Who are the companies andorganizations that have enabled
(35:35):
X to appear to be brand safe?
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (35:39):
Okay.
Nandini Jammi (35:39):
Those are the organizations that we need to be
paying attention to, becausethose are the, those are the
suits that show up and and comein and say, oh yeah, x has a
99.99 percent brand safety scorefrom us.
Double verify or tag thetrustworthy accountability group
(36:00):
which is supposed to be anaccountability body in our one
of the primary accountabilitybodies in our industry who had
awarded AXA brand safetycertified seal and they renewed
it in the last year, in fact,without telling anybody.
(36:22):
I mean, it was quietly done, andthe only reason that I found
out about it was because I wasGoogling something and it came
up.
So these are the kinds ofthings that enable X to go into
boardrooms, into meetings withadvertisers and convince them to
join their platform, becausethese more serious organizations
(36:45):
have greenlighted that.
So if those seriousorganizations were supposed to
have done their job uh, havehave are saying it's it's okay
to do, then sure we'll give it ashot.
So yeah, mean we can't holdsomeone like Elon Musk
accountable at this point.
We can't hold.
(37:06):
In my opinion, it's verydifficult to hold Facebook and
Zuckerberg and Google and allthese companies accountable, but
we can go after this sort ofmafia, as I see it, of
organizations that aresupporting them and that are
selling them into the industryas solutions to be trusted.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (37:32):
One could say that there are two
strategies to doing this kind ofactivism, which is being behind
the scenes, completely unknownperson, not public face and all
that, or being all out likeyou're doing, like having a
strong social media presence anddoing a lot of PR and all of
that.
Do you think it's payingdividends to actually be a
(37:55):
publicly known face?
I assume that this strengthensyour relationship deeper with
the ones that you get along well, but you create a lot of
enemies, right?
So is it?
How are you dealing with it?
Especially, you know the publicexposure.
You receive threats all thetime.
Really famous people havetargeted you on their, you know,
(38:15):
on their channels and podcastsand publications and whatnot.
So how are you dealing with allof these?
Personally, it must be reallyrough implications and whatnot.
Nandini Jammi (38:24):
So how are you dealing with all of these
personally?
It must be really rough.
For me personally, it rolls offmy back.
I have received a lot ofthreats in the past, but to me
it's just a sign that I'm beingeffective and efficient.
Obviously it's not pleasant,but I don't really care.
So, yeah, that's my answer.
I don't really care.
So, yeah, that's my answer.
(38:44):
I don't really care, but it isreally good to be public because
it allows me to connect withpeople directly, and I am now
somebody who has been in thisindustry.
Well, I hesitate to say I'mpart of this industry.
I am an accountability personin this industry, reluctantly so
(39:05):
for the last eight years, and Ilike to think that that's a
fact that helps people trust meand to trust my organization and
trust the people that we workwith my organization and trust
(39:26):
the people that we work with,because, you know, there's not a
lot of people who have stuck itout to this point.
I'm kind of looking around andI see that, you know, a lot of
the landscape has changed, a lotof the players have moved on,
but we're just kind of stillhere with the same drumbeat Like
we can't fix this problem thatwe started eight years ago.
So I would like to think thatbeing public is ultimately a
(39:50):
positive, so that people can puta face or now I'm happy to say,
multiple faces to this effort.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (39:59):
That leads us to segue into this,
because usually when you are thepublic face of a company, the
company ends up suffering fromassociating and some everybody
else associates the company witha face, right, but usually
there's a team behind it.
I always say I've got twoco-founders, I've got 20
employees, they do amazing work.
I don't do shit, I just do thepodcast.
It's just like I'm thespokesperson of the company,
(40:21):
obviously the public face of thecompany, because nobody else
wants to talk to people becausethey're developers, right.
But, jokes aside, that leaves adeep feeling of frustration of
me because it's like I'm not,I'm taking all the credit.
They are not.
I do all the work.
I think it's a small part of itand that only fuels my imposter
syndrome all the time.
Like you know, far fromreducing it, it's like no, it's
(40:44):
fueling it even more because Iactually get the credit I don't
deserve.
Of course, somebody has to dothis.
There's a value in providingthe like, the phase and being
and being actually like thecommunicator and the, the sort
of spiritual leader of the cult,but at the same time I don't
know if you're also gettingthese is there.
How are you dealing with the,the, this idea of like oh, maybe
(41:05):
I'm just taking credit, Ishouldn't?
You know, jokes aside, I workhard, as as you do, probably,
and so, but you know there'scredit that you want to pass on
to the team.
How do you do it?
How do you make sure that theyare?
They get this retribution aswell oh well, we just say it.
Nandini Jammi (41:24):
I mean we, our team actually was behind.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (41:26):
Mention on Twitter right At the name
and that's it.
No, how do you do it?
Nandini Jammi (41:30):
Yeah, we, I mean we were, we were private until
just this year, when we launchedour new website.
We, I guess, like had a grandsurprise for everybody, like oh,
there's 12 people working here.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (41:46):
Nice.
Nandini Jammi (41:48):
And so, yeah, we didn't really give credit in the
way that we should have in thelast year because of that fact,
but we're obviously, claire andI, are we sort of see ourselves
as very I'm not going to saylucky, because we did put in a
lot of work to get to this point, but we are very grateful for
(42:09):
what we have achieved and wehave, uh, we're so lucky to have
a great team that is extremelytalented and competent and
awesome, and are we see our ourrole as elevating our team
members and helping them toachieve their best work.
(42:31):
That is something that I thinkis quite, uh, you know, not
something to be taken forgranted in a lot of companies.
So we really do focus ongetting out of the way of our
very talented team members andletting them do their work, and
then, of course, we're happy togive them the credit that they
(42:52):
deserve.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (42:54):
How can we make sure there's a
checkmate in every country?
Is there something that youhave thought about?
You're permanently battling thetech giants in the US because
they're from there, right, andsome of the biggest
disinformation networks andsites and podcasts and whatnot
they are from the US, and so,but how?
Like this happens everywhere inall different languages, and I
(43:17):
remember back in the day withSleeping Giants, you had like
local representations or likedifferent representations for
different languages as well.
So is this something that youthink you can replicate, or
somebody else ought to do itindependently in every country,
like, for instance, if theywanted to do it in countries
that they desperately so neededit?
Nandini Jammi (43:35):
Well, absolutely, we have no secrets here.
We have no company secrets asfar as our methods and our
playbook and our strategies, andwe're happy to share and
collaborate and we do.
We work with a lot of uh, wework with a lot of organizations
here in the us, as well asinternationally, um, in you know
(43:56):
, you name it.
We're working with a lot ofcountries, either directly or
indirectly, and what we kind ofsee ourselves as is a hub of
knowledge that we are willing to, and hoping to, amplify through
partnerships.
So we do hope to expand ourfootprint through the work of
(44:20):
other organizations andindividuals in other countries,
and we see ourselves as aresource to them.
So the way to do that is justto, I guess, reach out to us if
you have an organization that isdoing this type of work or
would like to get involved andsee if there's some way for us
to help out.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (44:43):
How about running a nonprofit?
You mentioned that you're anonprofit, which basically makes
one of the good things aboutrunning a nonprofit is it makes
you uncorruptible, right.
So, and because companies, youknow they can be bought, then
they get a board of directors,they get investment and whatnot,
and so maybe their directionand strategy can be influenced
by these people, by externalpeople right, and the interest,
(45:05):
but whereas a nonprofit cannot.
What are the other things thatyou didn't expect from a
nonprofit that you found alongthe way and like, okay, yeah,
this is actually good, or wasthere some surprise you didn't
expect or something that, oh, Icannot do that.
I want to do that, but I cannotbecause I'm a nonprofit.
Nandini Jammi (45:22):
A nonprofit is really just a business.
It's just a business structure.
It's absolutely capable of beinginfluenced and uh and abused,
so I wouldn't say that that isum necessarily uh something that
a nonprofit is immune immunefrom.
However, I'm happy to say thatwe don't expect to get rich off
(45:47):
of a nonprofit, and we don'texpect to.
I think Claire and I are thefounders and we are very
committed to our mission.
I mean, this is all we want toreally do.
We want to make a difference inthe world and we we both
established that with each other, and we also uh are held to
(46:09):
that standard by our, our board,who is also made up of people
who are committed to to holdingthis industry accountable and
bettering it.
Uh, we've really worked hard tosurround ourselves with really
good people with a strong senseof a vision of what the future
(46:32):
looks like.
Our funders share our vision.
We have a universe of peoplewho support us and who are
looking for ways to help usbolster our effect and impact in
the world.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (46:48):
Okay, so last question is how we can
help you now.
Is there any way we canpossibly help from this, from
our community Life on Mars?
Nandini Jammi (46:56):
Thank you for asking.
So the easiest way to help usis to follow us on social media
and or sign up for our emails onour website and to follow along
with us, because what we do isevery time you like one of our
(47:18):
posts, or comment on one of ourposts, it shows up to a bigger
audience.
Or comment on one of our posts,it shows up to a bigger
audience.
So if all you ever do is followus and just hit the like button
or, uh you know, leave us alittle message or a note, that
is immensely helpful, becausewhat check my ads does is not
possible without the power ofour community.
(47:39):
So that is the number one wayto help us.
The number two way to help usis to give us money we are not
promised.
You might be wondering how weget money if we're not a
business and we don't haveclients.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (47:55):
It takes 45 minutes to get to this
point, but yeah, let's talkabout money.
Nandini Jammi (48:00):
Yeah, so we have something that we call
checkmates.
It's our membership for peoplewho would like to support us
through small donations fromanywhere from $5, $10, 20, 50,
and so on, on a monthly basis,and that that is one of our sort
(48:21):
of we, those folks, our innercircle, and that really makes a
big difference for us.
So those are two ways to getinvolved.
But, as I like to say, and thething that I'm most proud of of
our organization, is that youdon't need to have money to help
our work.
Um, just have a social mediaaccount, talk about us to your
(48:44):
friends and family, get the wordout about the work that we do
and the stories that we tell,because the more folks who know,
the more we can mobilize themto help us make the change that
we need.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (49:00):
Right, so you heard this everybody.
Just follow Nandini on socialmedia and go to the website
newly fresh website, redesignedand then check who the people
working at CheckMyAds are,follow them on social media,
spread the word and also reportfucking Nazis on the social.
So let's do it.
Any parting words, 30 secondsto share what's coming up next
(49:22):
for you at CheckMyAds oranything interesting you you
want to disclose.
Nandini Jammi (49:26):
Or we can wrap it up here Don't forget to follow
me on LinkedIn, where I havemoved all of the drama from
Twitter over to this much moreboring platform, but it's
actually working and I thinkpeople are enjoying seeing the
bizarro stories that I oncehoused over on Twitter.
(49:47):
Yeah, we plan to do a lot morewith LinkedIn, so come join us
for that alone.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (49:57):
It can be hard, because LinkedIn people
don't disclose whether they arefascists or not.
Usually people don't speakabout politics, but I don't know
.
I'm going to keep an eye out.
I'm going to see how thesethings play out, because
LinkedIn is starting to havemore personal content.
In the last years I've seen ashift like people are not using
(50:18):
Facebook anymore.
Now it seems like they're beingmore open on LinkedIn, because
I don't know if that creates abetter branding image or just
LinkedIn used to be too cold andtoo distant and now they want
to be more personal and intimateand they're sharing things on
LinkedIn.
But I don't know, that's astrange combination.
I don't know how this is goingto play out, but definitely your
(50:41):
people is there, and so wishingyou continued success and thank
you for sharing your time withus and your experience as we
learn a ton today.
Nandini Jammi (50:50):
Hey, thanks so much for having me on today,
Alex.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (50:53):
Thank you.
Hello everybody, Alex from Life on
Mars, here and in this episodewe bring you Nandini Jammi, who
is a familiar face to manybecause, if you follow me on
social media, that's one of theaccounts and personalities I
retweet the most and I'm in aweof her work and her agency's
work.
Check my ads, which is acompany I deeply admire because
(00:22):
they are doing a great kickassjob at dismantling and
disfunding I don't know ifthat's even a word right-wing
advertisers and people whopretend to be other brands,
basically companiesimpersonating other companies
and deceiving people and tryingto rip off money from
(00:42):
not-so-tech-savvy people, or,you know, all these other giant
scammy schemes on the internet.
And so in this episode wediscuss how to do that from the
perspective of a small agency.
When they were on the podcast,when she was on the podcast a
couple of years back, she wasjust starting this venture.
This time around, she's almost20 people in the company.
(01:04):
This venture this time around,she's almost 20 people in the
company.
We talk about business ethics,we talk about principles,
company values, we talk aboutthe exposure and social media.
We talk about the future ofthese social media and marketing
schemes.
And how can we avoid and howcan we prevent these kind of
scams.
And so, without further ado, letme introduce you to Nandini
Jammi.
(01:25):
Let's go! Nice.
All right, Good morning overthere.
How are you doing?
Nandini Jammi (01:31):
Good morning to you, alex, it is morning.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (01:34):
You're making an exception for us
because it's early morning inthe US and it's not for us.
Yeah, thank you for that.
Nandini Jammi (01:43):
I don't like to talk to people before 10 am, but
here we are.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (01:47):
I don't like to talk to people.
I'm also making an exception,so we're even.
Nandini Jammi (01:52):
Oh yeah, no, we're totally even.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (01:55):
How about this podcast thing?
I mean you promised to bring onthe Check my Ads podcast, but
it seems like it's a projectthat you keep postponing, and
that would be a podcast I'ddefinitely like to check out and
listen to actively, because youknow you produce so much great
stuff that probably you've gotlots of content every week.
Tell me more about that.
Nandini Jammi (02:17):
Oh gosh, starting off with the hardball.
Okay, well, it's true.
A few years ago, we intended tostart a podcast.
In fact, starting a podcast wasthe impetus for us to start
Check my Ads.
But things got in the way right.
Life got in the way around 10,12 people and I have some of the
(02:50):
smartest people that I get tocall my coworkers now, and the
time has never been better toget these ladies on a call.
We're a lot of ladies at thiscompany.
So it's coming.
We're going to be doing it.
In fact, we are starting offsmall and easy with a LinkedIn
live.
We're doing our first LinkedInlive this week, in two days.
(03:11):
No, today's Wednesday in oneday.
And, yeah, I think peopleshould be excited to hear what
we have to say about a lot ofthings that are going on in ad
tech.
I think people are hungry for areal, independent, honest, raw
(03:32):
voice on the issues that we talkabout, that a lot of people are
thinking about, so I'm excitedto get that started.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (03:41):
I don't know if we actually, to my
recollection, we didn't talkabout the podcast on the episode
we recorded in early 2021.
You started TechMads in 2020,if I'm not mistaken, I think
those were the early days of thecompany, when we had the
conversation with our friend,Josh Feldberg on this podcast,
(04:05):
and I remember that you had someideas hey, how do we break into
this overcrowded world?
Ad talk is so vast.
The majority of people in thissector are marketers, Therefore,
everything is so growth hack.
It's not even funny.
It's really hard to get intothis business, right.
Luckily, you had priorexperience in this and, of
(04:27):
course, you know how to do it.
So that brings me to my sort offirst question, which is we
like small independent companies.
We often struggle to get ourvoices heard right, and that's
something you shared in socialmedia.
Sometimes you know you sharesomething and people might
congratulate you on, or theydon't believe it's really you,
(04:50):
right, it's?
Oh, I did this Like wait, youand who else right you and how
many people more?
And did you partner with abigger company?
How did you accomplish thisalone, right?
And so that's something that Iparticularly share with you, and
by creating a podcast.
Maybe that's the best way tocreate a voice or like a bigger
(05:10):
channel for you.
So I don't know if that's alongthe lines of the things that
you were thinking.
Nandini Jammi (05:15):
Yes, it is.
In fact, there's just so muchthat happens in any given week
that I feel like writing hasalways been my medium for
expressing myself justpersonally.
But there's so much more to besaid and I think people need to
(05:36):
hear our voices, so podcastingis a great way to do that.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (05:40):
Exactly .
I mean, there are so many bigthings that you have
accomplished lately.
One of the things I rememberexchanging on Twitter about was
that issue that, for instance,mark Cuban and Shark Tank had
with some of their items beingcounterfeited or sold with their
image illegally online.
(06:01):
That's one of the many thingsyou do, but it's interesting to
see how a company that eats only10 people and you probably had
big clients from the get-gobecause of previous experiences
and I will be digging deeper onthat, but if I were in your
position, I would be havingdifficulties explaining that.
(06:24):
Oh yeah, we work for Mark Cubanand only 10 people, like he's
probably have 10 people in hisown house.
You know doing stuff for him.
So how did you usually comeacross this kind of deal flow
and it's a recommendation, it'salready branding.
Nandini Jammi (06:39):
Well, so I need to just clarify that we're not a
for-profit company, so we don'twork for anybody.
We don't have any clients.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (06:46):
Okay, good point.
Nandini Jammi (06:47):
So Check my Ads is a nonprofit.
We're the digital advertisingwatchdog.
We are an independentorganization.
We don't take any money fromany of the big tech companies,
or just tech companies ingeneral, because those are the
folks that we are watching andwhose lives we are working hard
to make health.
So the reason we're a nonprofitis because we we will for a lot
(07:14):
of reasons, but one of thosereasons is to allow us to pull
in the public and to to do truepublic interest work that
benefit everybody.
So the way that Mark Cuban, likeMark Cuban, reaching out to us
(07:35):
was just like an interesting andrandom thing.
It came at an interesting timefor me personally, because so
here's what happened In Novemberof this past year um, he
reached out to me over dms tosay that he was dealing with an
issue on, particularly on google, with uh, with with essentially
(08:02):
shark, like fake shark Tankketo gummies.
So basically, these weight lossgummies all over the internet
that were claiming to beaffiliated with or endorsed by
Shark Tank and or Mark Cubanpersonally.
And this was a problem becauseShark Tank viewers, especially
(08:23):
older viewers, believe what theysee online and were falling for
the scam and essentially beingroped into making monthly
payments for some, you know,garbage product that doesn't
work or just never comes.
So he said he'd reached out toGoogle many times and had not
(08:44):
made any progress with them.
So he was contacting us to seeif there was something that we
could do.
Now this actually falls outsideof the purview of what Check my
Ads was.
Last year we were working on.
Our tagline on our website wascutting disinformation off at
the source.
So this isn't disinformation.
This is somebody having aproblem with scammers.
(09:07):
It's like a copyright issue.
But when that issue came to me,came to my attention, I started
thinking about how well Istarted to pay.
First of all, I started to paymore attention to these small
scale scams, like in the daysafter I received that message
and one, uh one ad that I cameacross while I was on YouTube
(09:31):
looking at a you know some kindof a recipe, I got an ad for a
Kelly Clarkson endorsed ketogummy.
So I clicked on that and ittook me to a website that looked
exactly like a news site, likea CBS news site, and it claimed
that Kelly Clarkson had gone on,I think the Today Show, and
(09:52):
said she lost a ton of weightbecause of keto gummies, and
here is your link to buy themyourself and that got me
thinking.
It made me realize that thesesmall-scale scams are using the
same tools that anybody can useto scam people or trick people
(10:15):
or manipulate people intobelieving anything, and so that
kind of helped me realize thatwe're working on, even like the
scope of our work needs to bebigger.
But at that time I saw anopportunity.
When Mark reached out, I saw anopportunity to try something new
, and so what we did at thattime was we agreed to help them
(10:37):
out.
We, uh, we got together, uh, um, we, we, we wrote a couple, we
wrote an article bringingattention to the issue.
We will actually, even beforewe did that, we actually reached
out to.
We used Google's own mechanismsfor reporting fake ads and scam
ads and did not hear back.
(10:57):
So using their normaldesignated method didn't work
for us, even though this was anopen and shut case.
So after that, we decided toescalate.
The way we did that was bywriting a piece on it.
We made a TikTok on it.
We said that this is veryclearly a scam and that if
(11:20):
they're not going to take theirregular mechanism seriously,
we're going to have to escalateby reaching out to the global VP
of ads at Google, a man namedDan Taylor, and we published an
email address and asked ourfollowers to email him and make
this a problem for him.
(11:51):
Google ads updated their policyspecifically to to uh, I don't
have the language in front of me, but it is to ban scammers who
impersonate people or businessesto sell a fake thing Like it
was.
It was the exact thing that wewere asking them to do.
Now one could argue and thatperson would be me that these
policies don't really matter,and what matters is enforcement,
(12:14):
because policies like thisalready exist under Google's
current or previous iteration oftheir, of their policy.
But it matters because thesepeople listened to us.
It was clear that we causedthem some distress or some level
of stress, and that I mean Idon't know what Mark was able to
do on his end with the workthat we were doing, how he might
(12:37):
have been leveraging it, but wewere able to get that result
and those Shark Tank gummy adsare gone Not all of them, as it
turns out, just the ones that wespecifically highlighted in our
article.
So there's a lot more work tobe done, but that was a very key
move for us and for Google, away for us to sort of exercise
(13:03):
our power and get something bigdone.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (13:08):
I remember the case.
I don't remember the specificsand I don't remember whether the
content of those speeches wasonly text and image, but one
would think that nowadays it'sgetting even more sophisticated
to impersonate somebody elsebecause they can use fake video,
fake ai, right, so the um likedeep fakes to generate somebody
like kelly clarkson, somebodyelse saying, yeah, I actually
(13:31):
did that, generate the video, itlooks fucking real.
Right, you can have like whoeveryou wanted to to say some
things that never happen andit's more sophisticated and and
look without video.
I think I read an article theother day that 97% of the news
that are shared on Facebook byelderly people are complete fake
(13:52):
and utter garbage.
Right, so that's without video.
That's usually that kind of youknow, super dodgy news site
that is super clickbaity andclaims false theories and
conspiranoia and stuff like that.
So it's already so easy totrick elderly and some other
demographics of people to do thewrong thing.
(14:13):
One can only imagine what isthe power behind video.
So how are you envisioning thisis going to affect the industry
even farther, because videojust makes it all the more
complicated to detect nowadays.
Nandini Jammi (14:27):
Well, I think the proliferation of fake and
falsely AI-generated junk isreally turbocharging the supply
of crap out there.
But I think what's important isto focus on policy and
(14:47):
enforcement, the technology thatis.
There's always going to be newtechnology and new ways to take
advantage of an old problem, butit is up to the companies to
enforce that, and that's what westay focused on.
(15:08):
This enforcement is not just toprotect users, who might be
duped into reading or buyingcertain things, but it is also
to protect advertisers, becausenot only do their ads end up on
(15:29):
some of this junk supply thatcould be run by God knows who,
but also, when you have scammersrunning ads alongside a
reputable company, then thevalue of the company's ad goes
down as well, because now peopledon't know what's real, and
(15:51):
that matters.
I mean, I, just before Markcontacted me, I had my own run
in with a scam.
I was trying to buy a pair ofhokas, which is a pair of
sneakers that you know.
I did a Google search online.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (16:07):
I really needed a new pair of
sneakers because mine werefalling apart.
Nandini Jammi (16:09):
So I was kind of in a rush and I was doing this
really late at night when I wassleepy and I I, you know I typed
in hokas into Google and Googlesearch suggestions suggested
hokas, official website, which Iclicked.
And then I clicked on the firstlink that I saw, assuming that
that would be the HOKA's website.
It was hokasuscom.
(16:32):
So I clicked on that and I waslike whoa, there's a crazy deal
going on today.
It was like two for 60, two for70 or something, and these
shoes are normally 140 bucks ormore.
And I was like, boy, I bettertake advantage of this deal
before it goes away.
I mean, like I had this scriptgoing on in my head like, of
course, of course, this is thereal thing.
So I went through a very oddcheckout process that I should
(16:56):
have flagged, but I was so tiredand I ended up buying you know,
buying a pair of shoes.
But I was so tired and I endedup buying you know, buying a
pair of shoes.
And and then I got an invoicefrom like some random company in
my PayPal and I was like, ohboy, I've been scammed.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (17:09):
I should have known but I didn't.
Nandini Jammi (17:11):
That's the thing, and if it could happen to me,
it could happen to anybody.
Um, so I I, you know.
I immediately went in and got arefund.
I reported it.
I got a refund from PayPal.
I put my story online andsomeone actually went ahead and
reported them to the domainregistrar, who killed off the
(17:34):
site and I was able to kind ofaddress my problem.
But this is rampant online andthis is what we have to address,
because what we're seeing hereis a decline of trust online,
because I never went and boughta pair of hokas after all this
happened.
I just went to the store and Ibought a pair of shoes because
it felt like too much trouble.
(17:54):
And if we cannot have trustonline, then what are we doing?
Who does that benefit?
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (18:02):
not have trust online.
Then what are we doing?
Who does that benefit?
You know and that happened toyou that you're tech savvy and
I've also fallen for certainscams online.
I'm like as tech savvy asanybody else, but the thing is
like sometimes they're so legitor they are, you know, you can
receive them over SMS, likeright now, as we were talking, I
just received an SMS from thelocal post service saying like,
oh, I've got a package I didn'tpay for because it was some kind
(18:25):
of like extra fee and somewhereelse that was unpaid.
And I was like, yeah, but whyis the link not HTTPS and why
then, when I hover on it, thenit actually redirects me to
somewhere else, somewhere else.
So I know I've got the, I'vegot the, the let's say the
(18:46):
theory, and I've got also thepractice, because I've fallen
for certain of these things inthe past.
But, like most people don't,most people will fall for this
again and again and again.
I find interesting this, thisidea of like we are losing trust
in the web, but then again, Ithink that's something that
Google got coming because, youknow, essentially Google served
you as this official page onlike on the first, you know,
(19:07):
first result, or maybe the firstpage of results, and it was a
totally scammy site.
But, like, then again, it's acompany that allows you to
advertise for the name ofsomebody else, like somebody
else's company.
Like I say, I wanted to promotemy conference.
I would write you know WebSummit better than Web Summit?
(19:28):
Or you look for Web Summit,then my conference appears there
.
How is that even legal, youknow?
So that's something that justbuckles my mind all the time.
Nandini Jammi (19:41):
I remember when I ran a google ads campaign for
my company and we had a googleads rep, like someone who was
teaching me how to use google,google ads, and he was, like
you're gonna have to put yourcompany name as one of the
keywords that you run ads on.
I was like, why would I do that?
He's like well, because otherpeople will take it if you don't
(20:02):
.
I was like, so I'm paying tohave my company come up on my
search, like when specificallysomeone looks up my company, I
still have to pay you.
And that's one of many thingsthat never made sense to me.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (20:18):
So you pay for your domain, by the way,
which is a way to get yourpresence online, but then you
have, on top of that, to pay forthe ads.
Nandini Jammi (20:28):
Oh, it's just a couple cents.
It's not very expensive.
Blah, blah, blah.
I mean I shouldn't be payinganything.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (20:34):
That doesn't guarantee anything,
because even if you pay for it,somebody outbids you.
They will win the placement,right.
I don't know if that's how itworks exactly, but I think they
can outbid you.
Yeah, they can outbid you.
Nandini Jammi (20:49):
I think the thing that is illegal is that you
can't put the name of yourcompetitor in the ad, or
something like that.
There's like one rule that youcan't break something like that.
There's like one rule that youcan't read.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (21:00):
No, that one isn't.
Because I remember like we, fora client or two, we're using
Monday or ClickUp, one of thesecompanies.
I think it was Monday and I wasresearching something I said I
wanted to go on and download itand the first thing I got or I
wanted to download no that now.
I remember I wanted to downloadBasecamp because that was the
tool that we were using and offthe sudden, I got served all of
(21:23):
these ads on Monday, and notonly was Monday on top of the
results, but they had articlespromoted saying Monday is better
than Basecamp.
I'm like I'm sure thisshouldn't be illegal.
So I spoke on Twitter, Iremember, and I got like I think
they removed the content aswell.
Twitter, I remember, and I gotlike I think they removed the
content as well.
I'm like, well, they had towait until somebody made a thing
(21:45):
out of it to remove it.
But why would Google allow that?
They don't give a flying fact,I assume like they're too busy
with other things, but thenagain they are allowing these
things to happen.
So I don't know if they're toobusy or they're just like
stiffening off money into theeconomy just because they're
allowing this and it's just tooprofitable.
Nandini Jammi (22:11):
And if nobody complains, I don't know.
I mean, that's what I would bedoing if I was an evil Google.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (22:16):
VP why?
Nandini Jammi (22:16):
would I do anything else?
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (22:23):
Exactly do anything else, exactly, then
then my, my, the next thing islike so these, these things are
happening and I, I really likethe, the idea of the social
justice that you areimplementing at check my ads,
because for me it is a way tocompensate the, the, the, the,
the exaggerated power thesecompanies have, that, unless you
do a really good campaign on PRand then something goes viral,
(22:45):
they don't fucking do anythingabout some of the injustices,
right?
I just heard today my sisterwent on the honeymoon flight and
I don't know, maybe I shouldhave said somebody else I'm
going to blip this out, probably, but anyway.
So somebody got into a planeand they bought the seats
together with a kid in themiddle, and all of that because
they wanted to be together, afamily going on honeymoon and
whatnot.
And so it turns out, thecompany, they downsized the
(23:08):
plane for whatever reason, andthey just put people the three
of them in separate seats,notwithstanding the fact that
one of them is a toddler, right,right and so, and they did know
it was a toddler because theypreviously they had relocated
them somewhere else because theycouldn't see it in an emergency
seat because, uh, there is atoddler.
So they knew that and in spiteof that, they just relocated him
(23:31):
in line 27, maybe, right?
So something like that.
And they're like well, you canfile a complaint, but nothing,
nobody's going to move a fingerfor that, unless you do
something that goes viral onTikTok or Instagram or social
media, right?
So most people don't have thispower.
So all the more important thatpeople like you exist to do like
(23:52):
that.
So how can people reach out toyou in case they find this kind
of illicit practices ordownright illegal things?
Nandini Jammi (24:03):
Well, you can find us at checkmyadsorg.
We have just rebranded so youcan enjoy our beautiful new
colors and website.
And we are active on all thesocials.
And I'm the most active now onLinkedIn, believe it or not,
(24:25):
where I've had to sort of runoff to after Twitter went down.
So still on Twitter or X, butthe audience that I'm most
interested in lives on LinkedIn,so therefore, so do I.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (24:42):
But how do you deal with the selection
of projects?
Because I assume that tons ofpeople are contacting you.
There's tons of interestingprojects you can share a peek
from.
So if they're kind of like awaiting list, or how do you
usually operate with the dealflow that you get?
Nandini Jammi (24:55):
We have a roadmap , we have a strategy and a
playbook and we have a vision ofwhat we would like to achieve.
And so we we, at this time ofour organization we are growing
the way we are expanding the waythat we look at the problem.
(25:17):
So in the last yearparticularly, we saw that.
We saw that talking aboutdisinformation, that focusing on
disinformation as our windowinto the world of ad tech was
not adequate, because there isso much that is happening in the
(25:40):
world of digital advertisingthat we want to address that is
not directly related todisinformation but that feeds
into that world.
So issues like ad fraud, oreven the word ad fraud, is so
(26:01):
big.
You know, um, but just you knowwe.
We follow the work of a companycalled analytics and, uh, that
company came out with all thesereally big stories last year
about how YouTube was defraudingits customers out of billions
of dollars through um, you know,informing them, reporting that
(26:21):
they had paid for premium adsbut actually they were garbage
ads and they were running in thecorners of people's browsers or
they weren't being seen or theywere being autoplayed.
This is all a form of fraud foradvertisers because they paid
more money to ensure that theirads ended up on youtubecom and
ran in front of people, ensurethat their ads ended up on
(26:45):
YouTubecom and ran in front ofpeople.
But one of the sort of sideissues that came up with this
was that YouTube was running adson, more ads on something
called search partner network,which is third party websites
off of YouTube properties, sooff of YouTubecom, off of the
YouTube app, third partywebsites that are supposed to be
(27:06):
carefully vetted and brand safe, and what we found was that
search partner network includedthings like um, rumble video,
which hosts all of the bannedcharacters uh, you know all the
peanut gallery of hate, hatemerchants and and disinfo,
(27:30):
disinfo people and, um, someiranian sanctioned websites I
think I might be getting thisconfused with a different report
but like just a bunch of stuffthat we should not be
advertising, shouldn't berunning their ads on, and so
this ad fraud issue and thisdisinfo issue kind of merge here
.
But if we want to talk aboutthis in an effective way, we
(27:52):
need to.
We need to step back and lookat the bigger picture, and so
one of the things that we didthis year is our.
We changed our tagline.
So our tagline now and thefocus of our work has shifted.
It hasn't changed, it hasshifted.
We're simply moving back back astep.
(28:15):
So we're now talking about theinternet that we deserve, free
from scams, lies andmanipulation, because, as I said
earlier with the Mark Cubanexample, that set of tools that
the scammers were using tomisinform people about Shark
Tank, keto gummies are the sametools that propagandists can use
(28:40):
to throw an election, and sothe problem really comes back
down to the tools, to theproducts, to the digital
advertising industry, and so weneed to talk about it in a much
bigger way, and if we want to beeffective, we need to look at
the full picture, address thefull picture, and that means not
(29:00):
just doing the work that I havebeen you know that I began
doing in 2016, which is callingout advertisers, calling out ad
tech companies, but we're alsolooking at research, our own,
developing our own research tobetter understand and uncover
issues and conflicts of interestin the industry.
But we're also looking at policy, and so now we've grown to a
(29:23):
point where we are pursuingpolicy, like actual laws that we
can put in place to help ensureregulation in this industry.
So to us, this is sort of athree-prong or three-pillar
project now and we are settingour sights on fixing the system
(29:48):
rather than just fixing smallissues that come up.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (29:54):
No, and that's super interesting
because there's so many angles.
You know cybersecurity can gowe could talk about, you know
the B2C aspect of how people arebeing ripped off and scammed by
these kind of companies.
But B2B, when it comes to like,you know cybersecurity can go
we could talk about.
You know the B2C aspect of howpeople are being ripped off and
scammed by these kinds ofcompanies.
But B2B, when it comes to like.
You know the image of yourcompany's advertising,
supposedly on YouTube or onTwitter for that matter, because
I think that's something thatwe see every day.
And then the ad appears afteryou know a white nationalist
(30:19):
tweet, or on the account of, orbeing promoted next to people
like Andrew Tate or somethinglike that.
So it's like you really don'twant to be there.
But as a company, ultimately youdon't have the control.
I think on Google you have gotmore control, but on Twitter not
as much.
And then again, most of thetimes there are intermediaries
in this, like there are agencieswho manage this for you.
(30:40):
So therefore, they delegate allof the risk.
The brands delegate all of therisk.
They're like oh, I hiredsomebody and so they can always
put the blame on that.
So do usually brands own up totheir own mistakes, or do they
just blame it on the agencydoing that work for them?
Nandini Jammi (31:00):
uh, do brands own up to their own mistakes?
I mean, I mean a lot of themrun it in-house, right.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (31:07):
But I guess somebody couldn't say like
, oh, that was the company Ihired to to run my ads, for
instance, right, yeah I mean.
Nandini Jammi (31:13):
A lot of times it comes down to the third party.
Obviously nobody wants to takeblame um but yeah we, we know
that.
You know, a couple ago I waslooking at ads on Steve Bannon's
War Room and I was coming upwith Volvo and Audi and Etsy and
Procter Gamble brands and thoseguys are not running their own
(31:37):
ads, they've handed that stuffover to agencies to do it for
them, that stuff over toagencies to do it for them, and
I don't know about taking theblame, but certainly they looked
into it and they tried to, Ithink, do their best to remove
the ads from that channel.
The fact is that advertisersstill don't know, as you just
(32:01):
just said, they don't haveinsight or visibility into where
their ads are running, andoften this is because not often
this is always because ad techvendors that they rely on to run
their ads refuse to or declineor gaslight even them into not
seeing them, into not seeingtrue, raw reports on their own
(32:33):
ad placements.
They actively work to keep themfrom seeing that information,
and so the problem really hereis this relationship.
It's not necessarily the tech,it's not necessarily anything
outside of just a pure powerplay, and so that power play is
what we need to address, and wealso need advertisers to step up
(32:55):
and know that it is part oftheir responsibility as stewards
of their brand to insist thatthey know where their ads are
running, because they spend alot of time and a lot of money
and a lot of effort making surethat they're building brands
that people trust, that peopleare loyal to, and the way that
(33:15):
you get that is by showing up inthe right places and in the
right way yeah, and exactly oneof the things that like pissed
me off.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (33:24):
A few months ago I remember I was on
Twitter and I had received thiskind of scam of buy this crypto
coin, like this meme coin orsomething buy a local
kindergarten from here inBarcelona.
I'm like, wait, wait a minute.
And it was an advertise, right,so it was an ad.
So, technically, somebodyeither hacked the kindergarten
(33:45):
Twitter account and posted thisbuy Solana or something like
that advertisement, or that wasjust Twitter basically making
app ads.
I don't know, because actuallyI went into the.
I remember screenshotting thisbecause I went into the account
and they had legit posts andthey had legit content.
(34:06):
So I don't know if it was.
Maybe it was something builtinto the system that they could
just impersonate somebody elseto make up fake accounts or fake
advertisements.
I don't know what happened there, but the account didn't look
compromised and that looked likedodgy as fuck.
In this case, how do you, inthis case, like how do you
actually go about it?
How do you, how do you telllike the entire not only the
(34:28):
entire platform is rigged, butlike the company cannot see I'm
pretty sure they couldn't seethis ad because the account was
not compromised.
How do you tell them look,you're actually publishing this
or somebody is publishing it inyour name.
It's got to be Twitter, becausenobody else has got access to
your account, right?
So I don't know, probablyTwitter operates differently,
(34:49):
but I think that was a reallyextreme and obscene usage of
these shady techniques.
So that's something that, as abrand, you can never know who
else is taking care, sorry, istaking over your information and
just using your image in someplace that you actually don't
control.
They were active on Twitter.
Nandini Jammi (35:10):
That's pretty illegal.
Yeah, you can't justimpersonate other brands.
Well, I mean, I'm certainly.
I don't think there's any pointreporting it to X, because they
don't really give a shit it toX because they don't really give
a shit.
But but I'll tell you who wecan target and who we are
targeting.
Who are the companies andorganizations that have enabled
(35:35):
X to appear to be brand safe?
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (35:39):
Okay.
Nandini Jammi (35:39):
Those are the organizations that we need to be
paying attention to, becausethose are the, those are the
suits that show up and and comein and say, oh yeah, x has a
99.99 percent brand safety scorefrom us.
Double verify or tag thetrustworthy accountability group
(36:00):
which is supposed to be anaccountability body in our one
of the primary accountabilitybodies in our industry who had
awarded AXA brand safetycertified seal and they renewed
it in the last year, in fact,without telling anybody.
(36:22):
I mean, it was quietly done, andthe only reason that I found
out about it was because I wasGoogling something and it came
up.
So these are the kinds ofthings that enable X to go into
boardrooms, into meetings withadvertisers and convince them to
join their platform, becausethese more serious organizations
(36:45):
have greenlighted that.
So if those seriousorganizations were supposed to
have done their job uh, havehave are saying it's it's okay
to do, then sure we'll give it ashot.
So yeah, mean we can't holdsomeone like Elon Musk
accountable at this point.
We can't hold.
(37:06):
In my opinion, it's verydifficult to hold Facebook and
Zuckerberg and Google and allthese companies accountable, but
we can go after this sort ofmafia, as I see it, of
organizations that aresupporting them and that are
selling them into the industryas solutions to be trusted.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (37:32):
One could say that there are two
strategies to doing this kind ofactivism, which is being behind
the scenes, completely unknownperson, not public face and all
that, or being all out likeyou're doing, like having a
strong social media presence anddoing a lot of PR and all of
that.
Do you think it's payingdividends to actually be a
(37:55):
publicly known face?
I assume that this strengthensyour relationship deeper with
the ones that you get along well, but you create a lot of
enemies, right?
So is it?
How are you dealing with it?
Especially, you know the publicexposure.
You receive threats all thetime.
Really famous people havetargeted you on their, you know,
(38:15):
on their channels and podcastsand publications and whatnot.
So how are you dealing with allof these?
Personally, it must be reallyrough implications and whatnot.
Nandini Jammi (38:24):
So how are you dealing with all of these
personally?
It must be really rough.
For me personally, it rolls offmy back.
I have received a lot ofthreats in the past, but to me
it's just a sign that I'm beingeffective and efficient.
Obviously it's not pleasant,but I don't really care.
So, yeah, that's my answer.
I don't really care.
So, yeah, that's my answer.
(38:44):
I don't really care, but it isreally good to be public because
it allows me to connect withpeople directly, and I am now
somebody who has been in thisindustry.
Well, I hesitate to say I'mpart of this industry.
I am an accountability personin this industry, reluctantly so
(39:05):
for the last eight years, and Ilike to think that that's a
fact that helps people trust meand to trust my organization and
trust the people that we workwith my organization and trust
(39:26):
the people that we work with,because, you know, there's not a
lot of people who have stuck itout to this point.
I'm kind of looking around andI see that, you know, a lot of
the landscape has changed, a lotof the players have moved on,
but we're just kind of stillhere with the same drumbeat Like
we can't fix this problem thatwe started eight years ago.
So I would like to think thatbeing public is ultimately a
(39:50):
positive, so that people can puta face or now I'm happy to say,
multiple faces to this effort.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (39:59):
That leads us to segue into this,
because usually when you are thepublic face of a company, the
company ends up suffering fromassociating and some everybody
else associates the company witha face, right, but usually
there's a team behind it.
I always say I've got twoco-founders, I've got 20
employees, they do amazing work.
I don't do shit, I just do thepodcast.
It's just like I'm thespokesperson of the company,
(40:21):
obviously the public face of thecompany, because nobody else
wants to talk to people becausethey're developers, right.
But, jokes aside, that leaves adeep feeling of frustration of
me because it's like I'm not,I'm taking all the credit.
They are not.
I do all the work.
I think it's a small part of itand that only fuels my imposter
syndrome all the time.
Like you know, far fromreducing it, it's like no, it's
(40:44):
fueling it even more because Iactually get the credit I don't
deserve.
Of course, somebody has to dothis.
There's a value in providingthe like, the phase and being
and being actually like thecommunicator and the, the sort
of spiritual leader of the cult,but at the same time I don't
know if you're also gettingthese is there.
How are you dealing with the,the, this idea of like oh, maybe
(41:05):
I'm just taking credit, Ishouldn't?
You know, jokes aside, I workhard, as as you do, probably,
and so, but you know there'scredit that you want to pass on
to the team.
How do you do it?
How do you make sure that theyare?
They get this retribution aswell oh well, we just say it.
Nandini Jammi (41:24):
I mean we, our team actually was behind.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (41:26):
Mention on Twitter right At the name
and that's it.
No, how do you do it?
Nandini Jammi (41:30):
Yeah, we, I mean we were, we were private until
just this year, when we launchedour new website.
We, I guess, like had a grandsurprise for everybody, like oh,
there's 12 people working here.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (41:46):
Nice.
Nandini Jammi (41:48):
And so, yeah, we didn't really give credit in the
way that we should have in thelast year because of that fact,
but we're obviously, claire andI, are we sort of see ourselves
as very I'm not going to saylucky, because we did put in a
lot of work to get to this point, but we are very grateful for
(42:09):
what we have achieved and wehave, uh, we're so lucky to have
a great team that is extremelytalented and competent and
awesome, and are we see our ourrole as elevating our team
members and helping them toachieve their best work.
(42:31):
That is something that I thinkis quite, uh, you know, not
something to be taken forgranted in a lot of companies.
So we really do focus ongetting out of the way of our
very talented team members andletting them do their work, and
then, of course, we're happy togive them the credit that they
(42:52):
deserve.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (42:54):
How can we make sure there's a
checkmate in every country?
Is there something that youhave thought about?
You're permanently battling thetech giants in the US because
they're from there, right, andsome of the biggest
disinformation networks andsites and podcasts and whatnot
they are from the US, and so,but how?
Like this happens everywhere inall different languages, and I
(43:17):
remember back in the day withSleeping Giants, you had like
local representations or likedifferent representations for
different languages as well.
So is this something that youthink you can replicate, or
somebody else ought to do itindependently in every country,
like, for instance, if theywanted to do it in countries
that they desperately so neededit?
Nandini Jammi (43:35):
Well, absolutely, we have no secrets here.
We have no company secrets asfar as our methods and our
playbook and our strategies, andwe're happy to share and
collaborate and we do.
We work with a lot of uh, wework with a lot of organizations
here in the us, as well asinternationally, um, in you know
(43:56):
, you name it.
We're working with a lot ofcountries, either directly or
indirectly, and what we kind ofsee ourselves as is a hub of
knowledge that we are willing to, and hoping to, amplify through
partnerships.
So we do hope to expand ourfootprint through the work of
(44:20):
other organizations andindividuals in other countries,
and we see ourselves as aresource to them.
So the way to do that is justto, I guess, reach out to us if
you have an organization that isdoing this type of work or
would like to get involved andsee if there's some way for us
to help out.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (44:43):
How about running a nonprofit?
You mentioned that you're anonprofit, which basically makes
one of the good things aboutrunning a nonprofit is it makes
you uncorruptible, right.
So, and because companies, youknow they can be bought, then
they get a board of directors,they get investment and whatnot,
and so maybe their directionand strategy can be influenced
by these people, by externalpeople right, and the interest,
(45:05):
but whereas a nonprofit cannot.
What are the other things thatyou didn't expect from a
nonprofit that you found alongthe way and like, okay, yeah,
this is actually good, or wasthere some surprise you didn't
expect or something that, oh, Icannot do that.
I want to do that, but I cannotbecause I'm a nonprofit.
Nandini Jammi (45:22):
A nonprofit is really just a business.
It's just a business structure.
It's absolutely capable of beinginfluenced and uh and abused,
so I wouldn't say that that isum necessarily uh something that
a nonprofit is immune immunefrom.
However, I'm happy to say thatwe don't expect to get rich off
(45:47):
of a nonprofit, and we don'texpect to.
I think Claire and I are thefounders and we are very
committed to our mission.
I mean, this is all we want toreally do.
We want to make a difference inthe world and we we both
established that with each other, and we also uh are held to
(46:09):
that standard by our, our board,who is also made up of people
who are committed to to holdingthis industry accountable and
bettering it.
Uh, we've really worked hard tosurround ourselves with really
good people with a strong senseof a vision of what the future
(46:32):
looks like.
Our funders share our vision.
We have a universe of peoplewho support us and who are
looking for ways to help usbolster our effect and impact in
the world.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (46:48):
Okay, so last question is how we can
help you now.
Is there any way we canpossibly help from this, from
our community Life on Mars?
Nandini Jammi (46:56):
Thank you for asking.
So the easiest way to help usis to follow us on social media
and or sign up for our emails onour website and to follow along
with us, because what we do isevery time you like one of our
(47:18):
posts, or comment on one of ourposts, it shows up to a bigger
audience.
Or comment on one of our posts,it shows up to a bigger
audience.
So if all you ever do is followus and just hit the like button
or, uh you know, leave us alittle message or a note, that
is immensely helpful, becausewhat check my ads does is not
possible without the power ofour community.
(47:39):
So that is the number one wayto help us.
The number two way to help usis to give us money we are not
promised.
You might be wondering how weget money if we're not a
business and we don't haveclients.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (47:55):
It takes 45 minutes to get to this
point, but yeah, let's talkabout money.
Nandini Jammi (48:00):
Yeah, so we have something that we call
checkmates.
It's our membership for peoplewho would like to support us
through small donations fromanywhere from $5, $10, 20, 50,
and so on, on a monthly basis,and that that is one of our sort
(48:21):
of we, those folks, our innercircle, and that really makes a
big difference for us.
So those are two ways to getinvolved.
But, as I like to say, and thething that I'm most proud of of
our organization, is that youdon't need to have money to help
our work.
Um, just have a social mediaaccount, talk about us to your
(48:44):
friends and family, get the wordout about the work that we do
and the stories that we tell,because the more folks who know,
the more we can mobilize themto help us make the change that
we need.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (49:00):
Right, so you heard this everybody.
Just follow Nandini on socialmedia and go to the website
newly fresh website, redesignedand then check who the people
working at CheckMyAds are,follow them on social media,
spread the word and also reportfucking Nazis on the social.
So let's do it.
Any parting words, 30 secondsto share what's coming up next
(49:22):
for you at CheckMyAds oranything interesting you you
want to disclose.
Nandini Jammi (49:26):
Or we can wrap it up here Don't forget to follow
me on LinkedIn, where I havemoved all of the drama from
Twitter over to this much moreboring platform, but it's
actually working and I thinkpeople are enjoying seeing the
bizarro stories that I oncehoused over on Twitter.
(49:47):
Yeah, we plan to do a lot morewith LinkedIn, so come join us
for that alone.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (49:57):
It can be hard, because LinkedIn people
don't disclose whether they arefascists or not.
Usually people don't speakabout politics, but I don't know
.
I'm going to keep an eye out.
I'm going to see how thesethings play out, because
LinkedIn is starting to havemore personal content.
In the last years I've seen ashift like people are not using
(50:18):
Facebook anymore.
Now it seems like they're beingmore open on LinkedIn, because
I don't know if that creates abetter branding image or just
LinkedIn used to be too cold andtoo distant and now they want
to be more personal and intimateand they're sharing things on
LinkedIn.
But I don't know, that's astrange combination.
I don't know how this is goingto play out, but definitely your
(50:41):
people is there, and so wishingyou continued success and thank
you for sharing your time withus and your experience as we
learn a ton today.
Nandini Jammi (50:50):
Hey, thanks so much for having me on today,
Alex.
Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (50:53):
Thank you.
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