Ad contrarian Bob Hoffman warns marketers to pull back from the digital cliff

"They continue to be non-transparent in their practices, they will not allow full third-party auditing which has been a standard practice in the agency business for years – clients don't seem to care," Mr Hoffman said.

"It's like they've been mesmerised​. We spent decades developing practices so we can understand the relative media value we're buying through auditing and now these guys won't agree to that."

Both Facebook and Google have been embroiled by advertising scandals over the last 12 months. Facebook has admitted to multiple errors to metrics it providers marketers which impacts their spending.

Google was found to put many of its clients' advertising on content such as extremist recruitment videos, anti-Semitic and anti-feminist content on its video-sharing platform YouTube, which led to a large-scale boycott of the site.

A number of major Australian brands were found to unwittingly fund piracy via Google's display advertising network.

"The thing about the brand safety issues with Facebook and Google, I wrote about that years ago, but as soon as that appeared in newspapers, all of a sudden the advertisers pretended they were shocked, they had no idea ... I don't buy that," Mr Hoffman said.

Mr Hoffman warned the tracking digital advertising is hurting journalism and is concerning from a privacy stand point.

"The whole essence of online tracking is to follow people from quality websites like The Australian Financial Review, follow them to Bikinibabe.com, and it's costing you 1/50 what it cost you on a quality website," he said.

"This is not just hurting journalism, it's hurting society. We have fake news and crappy websites that people are going to all the time and advertisers are sending them money. It's diminishing the ability of quality media organisations to exist and sending money to the crappiest places possible."

However, Mr Hoffman said the issue is not too far gone to rescue.

"People don't understand how their privacy and security is being compromised by all this tracking," he said.

He pointed to legislation in the European Union, which will be enforceable in May 2018, called the General Data Protection Regulation, which provides tougher rules for the use and privacy of EU citizens' data.

"This will effect the ability of advertisers to send their ads to crappy locations instead of reaching people on the websites of quality publishers who are developing an audience. I think this is an important step," Mr Hoffman said.

"This is a serious issue for journalism, for the health of democracy and I think the public, when educated about the problems and the dangers of surveillance marketing, will be in agreement that these are needed things."

Mr Hoffman will be in Australia in September to deliver the keynote speech for ReThinkTV, run by broadcasting industry lobbying and marketing group ThinkTV.