The shaky world of online ad transparency

… Major ad platforms like Google, Facebook and Twitter each launched their own versions of transparency platforms, which detail online political spending — a $1.9 billion industry in 2018, according to a projection from Kip Cassino of the ad-tracking firm Borrell Associates. … “Simply put, all these ad networks weren’t designed to be transparent,” said Damon McCoy, a professor of computer science and engineering at NYU [Tandon School of Engineering], who has tracked online ads as part of the school’s [Online Ad] Transparency project. “They’ve having to do a lot of jury-rigging of their ad networks to make everything transparent.”