NEWSLETTER #117 / JUNE 3, 2018
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DIGITAL DISCONTENT (THE GRAND UNIFIED THEORY)
Today's accomplishment: The worst headline in the history of newsletters.
For about a century physicists have been looking for a "grand unified theory" to explain the four known forces of the universe (gravity, electromagnetism, the weak and strong nuclear forces.)
Right now there is a lot of discontent around digital media. It is focused significantly on four areas: brand discontent, user discontent, agency discontent, and news discontent. As the great Don Marti suggests, these problems may well be considered manifestations of the same force: the current model of ad tech.
This subject is probably deserving of an entire book...oh, wait a minute, I wrote one... but, taking one crisis at a time, here's the argument for a "grand unified theory of digital discontent" in a nutshell.
Let's start with brand discontent. It has several components. First is brand safety, in which brands find their ads inadvertently running on and supporting horrifying websites and web content. They are also being robbed blind by fraudsters who are stealing 10's of billions of dollars from brands that are being misled about ad fraud by their agencies and their fraud detection suppliers. Finally, high quality brands are finding their equity eroded by sharing a cab with crappy, low-quality, and sometimes criminal brands.
User discontent is manifest in ad blockers being utilized in 100's of millions of devices (or according to Doc Searls, over a 1.5 billion) to escape from the horror of "more personal and relevant" online advertising.
Discontent with ad agencies is manifest in several ways: the migration of brands from agencies to consultants and in-house operations; the distrust that has been engendered by reports of corruption enabled by opaque online ad buying practices; and the perceived deterioration of advertising quality in all media.
News discontent also is multi-faceted including the disappearance of sustainable local news; the struggle to survive among quality news sources and magazines; the scourge of fake news; the rise of click bait disguised as news; and the diminished confidence that the public has in news media.
And what is the grand unified theory? It is the role that ad tech is playing in each of these crises. Is it the sole culprit? Of course not. But it is a significant contributor to each one.
- Brand safety problems and ad fraud are substantially enabled by ad tech's indecipherable Rube Goldberg maze of an ecosystem.
- Ad tech has trashed the online user experience. Among thirteen different types of advertising, the bottom eight, as rated by consumers, are all forms of online advertising.
- The serious decline in marketers' confidence in ad agencies has been exacerbated by the ad industry's indiscriminate adoption of ad tech flim-flammery without a sense of prudence or maturity.
- The news crisis is largely made possible by data leakage — the result of ad tech's determination to send advertising dollars to the lowest cost (crappiest) web entities.
The advertising and online media industries have shown they are too foolish and irresponsible to do anything about these crises. But now that the Facebook-Cambridge scandal has given the public a taste of the risks, and now that the GDPR is giving us at least a rough model of control, perhaps there's a 'grand unified' way to mitigate four crises at once -- by rethinking the scourge of ad tech.
Return Of The Jedi
After about a half-hour in forced exile, Sir Martin Sorrell is back. Sorrell was forced out of the company he founded, WPP, for mysterious allegations of misconduct. WPP is the largest advertising company the world has ever seen. This week he announced he is creating a new marketing services company. I wouldn't bet against him.
"Classically Trained Dancer Working In A Strip Club"
As noted here a few weeks ago, Silence Media in London held a conference last week focused on topics from my book, BadMen.
One of the panel discussions can be listened to here. In it, a senior media executive characterizes her experience working in today's advertising environment as analogous to being "a classically trained dancer working in a strip club."
Idiotic Obsession With Youth
One subject I have become a complete bore about is marketers' foolish and counter-productive obsession with young people and disregard of grown-ups. Here's some further evidence.
According to Campaign magazine, an agency recently conducted a study of about 500 women over the age of 40. Here are a few of the things they found:
- 80 percent feel brands underestimate their intelligence
- 84 percent feel brands overestimate their concern about their appearance
- 76 percent feel brands play a negative role in the perception of women over 40
Good job, marketers!
Can't Shut Up
This summer I'll be speaking in Oslo, San Francisco, and Buenos Aires. More about these talks in upcoming weeks.
For info about my speaking availability, go here.
