Deflating the opaque online ad bubble Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet Tim Hwang FSG Originals, 2020. 176 pp

A lightweight book aims a heavyweight punch at the digital advertising ecosystem General Motors and Ford, the two largest U.S. automakers, are together worth about US$100 billion. The combined value of Google and Facebook is about $2 trillion—20 times higher. What makes these companies worth so much? Ads. In Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet , Tim Hwang suggests that the digital advertising industry may be on the brink of a global collapse. And if it is not, he argues, then we should push it off the cliff.