The web gives us huge value, piles of stuff we want that we think we need, for free.
Or is it?
The web is fuelled by advertising. Pure and simple.
The ‘free ‘ stuff we get is really in exchange for our eyeballs, not because there is some benevolent power seeking to help us.
The two most powerful businesses on the planet, Google and Facebook are dependent on advertising for their profitability. Ok, Google has diversified a lot, and now generates profits from all sorts of other activities, but the core is still ads.
As consumers we all want the free stuff, and resent the advertising, otherwise, we would not install all the millions of ad blockers we have.
Pity no-one seems to have figured out what Don Draper knew, that advertising to be of commercial value has to be entertaining, as well as informative and behaviour changing. The deluge of crap on the web seems to have overwhelmed the need to be anything other than there. Those who flog various forms of unaccountable ‘ad tech’ have badly mistaken the value of the big idea, believing that many small poor ideas used every day, labelled content, can add up to the impact of the one big one.
Fantasy.
This missive is fuelled by the recent tightening of the LinkedIn algorithms related to the number and apparent management of ads being shown on an individuals home page, and the increasing challenge of communicating in groups. Clearly, the Microsoft behemoth is becoming more aggressive about squeezing a return from its purchase of LinkedIn. Not unreasonable in principal, but if they wreck the reason we are all there, it will blow up in their face.
It is time to wake up and recognise that advertising is the foundation of the web, so it had better be good, or the foundations will crumble. Advertising itself is not bad, it is bad advertising that is bad, coupled with its rotten digital bedfellow, tracking.
Having our digital footsteps stored and accumulated to better ‘personalise’ the ads we see, which is really code for trashing any personal digital security and privacy we may have, is not something I like at all. To my mind, it is a significant part of the price we really pay for the ‘free stuff’, and is on he verge of becoming too high.
Cartoon credit: Once again to Tom Fishburne, who continues to distil the fluff, self interest, hubris and pure bullshit that infests the marketing industry into bite sized chunks of reality.
