SHORT BIO:

Dr. Fou has been on the front lines of digital marketing for nearly 3 decades. It is from that vantage point that he studied and documented the nexus of cybercrime and ad fraud. As an investigator, Dr. Fou assists government and regulatory bodies; as a consultant he helps clients strengthen cybersecurity, mitigate threats and risks, including the flow of ad dollars that fund further criminal activity, and improve the effectiveness of their digital marketing campaigns.

Dr. Fou was the former Group Chief Digital Officer of Omnicom's Healthcare Consultancy Group, a $100 million group of 8 agencies serving pharma, medical device, and healthcare clients. Dr. Fou also taught digital strategy and integrated marketing at Rutgers University and NYU's School of Continuing and Professional Studies. 

Dr. Fou completed his PhD at MIT in Materials Science and Engineering at the age of 23. He started his career with McKinsey & Company and previously served as SVP, digital strategy lead at McCann/MRM Worldwide. 

ARTICLES / PUBLICATIONS:
https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/augustinefou
https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou
http://www.slideshare.net/augustinefou/presentations

#FouAnalytics - "see fou yourself"

what is it?
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/fouanalytics-alternative-google-analytics-fraud/

how is it different?
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/does-your-analytics-platform-have-cybersecurity-dr-augustine-fou-/

how to use it?
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/successful-facebook-campaigns-measured-fouanalytics-augustine-fou

shh, don't tell anyone
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-its-hard-bots-avoid-fouanalytics-detection-the-independent

YouTube is legit! 

at least a quarter of the clicks were from humans ;-)

(dark blue, FouAnalytics data) - https://lnkd.in/eMz7t8ja

Dr. Augustine Fou

really good (2 minute) intro explainer of digital ad fraud and why it persists, by NotebookLM.  what do you all think?

FouAnalytics - "see Fou yourself"

Greg Rizzardi

AI-manipulated or not, what I am seeing is a U.S. citizen being shot in the back of the head, while down on the ground. 

Newsguard: AI-Manipulated Image Shows Gun, Not Phone, Held by Killed Protester in Minneapolis - https://lnkd.in/eq8aaiWS

Citing an AI-manipulated image, conservative accounts falsely claim that Alex Pretti had a gun in his hand when he was fatally shot by ICE agents.

Why Does Dr. Fou Hate Agentic AI So Much?  (in the context of digital advertising, where bots plan the media buy and then buy the media, from other bots).

View newsletter: FouAnalytics Practitioners

DISCLOSURE: written by Gemini In the rapidly evolving landscape of advertising technology, the concept of agentic AI has emerged as a high-stakes fron

Open article: Why Does Dr. Fou Hate Agentic AI So Much? by Dr. Augustine Fou • 4 min read

Why Does Dr. Fou Hate Agentic AI So Much?

confirmed, every platform is claiming credit for the conversions; if you added up all the claimed conversions it would be 3 - 4X your actual sales. 

and then there's attribution fraud where attribution is deliberately manipulated to steal more ad budgets https://lnkd.in/ez-fuTps

CEO @ Disruptive Digital, a Top Meta Agency Partner | Ex-Facebook

If you run Meta and Google Ads, this is probably familiar:

• Meta says it drove the conversion
• Google says it drove the conversion
• GA4 disagrees

Nothing is broken.

In-platform attribution was never meant to be truth. It exists to optimize inside each platform.

Meta measures influence.

Google measures intent.

One conversion. Two claims. Expected behavior.

The mistake is comparing platforms in isolation.

The answer is judging performance at the blended level.

Attribution is not about being right.

It is about being useful.

View newsletter: Digital Marketing Navigator

If you advertise on both Meta and Google, you have probably experienced this: Meta says it drove the conversion Google says it drove the conversion GA

Open article: Meta Ads vs Google Ads In-Platform Attribution: How It Actually Works (And Why the Numbers Never Match) by Maurice Rahmey • 5 min read

Meta Ads vs Google Ads In-Platform Attribution: How It Actually Works (And Why the Numbers Never Match)

this is an extremely tame example of 5 display ads on a page (2 display ads didn't arrive in time, didn't render, hence blank) and 1 video ad (lower right)

In-situ screen shots from FouAnalytics helps you see where your ads ran and IF your ads arrived in time to be rendered on screen. more examples here - https://lnkd.in/eHMCxTsM

families of AI generated, templated sites 100% fake content, 100% AI generated images, some domains are days old but already eating millions of programmatic impressions. - https://lnkd.in/e89s5BTX

legacy verification vendors sent press releases last year about their AI slop site detection. Obviously doesn't work, like the rest of their fraud detection which has reported 1% fraud for the last 10 years, with no explanation.

Publishers, heads up --  FouAnalytics for PUBLISHERS

let me know what you think

This is a long time coming. I have seen good publishers get harmed over the years by "adtech." Almost every new tech or service they tried has led to 

Open article: FouAnalytics for Publishers by Dr. Augustine Fou • 4 min read

10 days in(to) 2026 - https://lnkd.in/eneDme9n

three major brand advertisers paid in full for 2026 for FouAnalytics Enterprise
1. CPG
2. financial services
3. pharma

one publisher
4. gaming / entertainment

Happy New Year!

agentic AI = bots

put simply, AdCP is bots buying ads from other bots, all while spending/wasting YOUR ad budgets

Agentic AI, LLM crawlers traffic surges - FouAnalytics data
 - https://lnkd.in/eun5wzY6

this would be such a bad future " the primary user of ad platforms in the future are Agents, and not Humans." 

no control, no transparency, no explanation of why stuff happened, no recourse, no way to fix stuff after the money has been wasted.  oh, I guess "to spend in full" is the goal. so I guess this will just make it easier to "flush" as it were.

At the AdCP NYC meet up 6 weeks ago I told a group of hundreds of executives that Agentic Advertising would kill the ad platform (UI). 

I posted a similar sentiment here, and, well, the comment section was filled with traders and ad operators who thought otherwise. 

And rightfully so! As an ad operator I can tell you that an ad platform's most valuable asset is its UI and UX,  without which, you can never develop the most important thing to an ad platform. 

A power user. 

But I believe, and it appears others as well, that the primary user of ad platforms in the future are Agents, and not Humans. 

And so I ask you now, what do the power users of the agentic advertising future look like?  What UI and UX will traders and ad operators need to become even more powerful agentic traders and agentic operators?

Yahoo seems to agree.

taplio

Augustine Fou's Linkedin Analytics

Augustine Fou

Performance ScoreAugustine Fou's LinkedIn Performance

Augustine Fou's Best Posts (last 30 days)

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

.css-6ytdur{background-image:linear-gradient(284deg, rgba(39, 43, 72, 1) 0%, rgba(33, 47, 183, 1) 100%);color:transparent;-webkit-background-clip:text;background-clip:text;}Augustine Fou's Linkedin Analytics

Augustine Fou

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Augustine Fou's LinkedIn Performance

Augustine Fou's Best Posts .css-1emoo84{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:400;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);}(last 30 days)

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Augustine Fou's Linkedin Analytics

Performance ScoreAugustine Fou's LinkedIn Performance

Augustine Fou's Best Posts (last 30 days)