2018 Predictions: How We'll Save Red-Hot Adtech From Burning Down

AdTech, AdTech, AdTech Is On Fire!

In adtech, we talk too much about features and functionality. We just do. I'm guilty of this – sometimes it's exciting to share what we have built – and why it's different. We applaud technical innovations like header-bidding and fraud detection – mere decorations – while the whole digital advertising house risks burning down. Consumer trust is in flames – only 20% of people actually enjoy ads, while 53% use ad blockers. And can you blame them?

Amidst adtech's extreme success, we've lost sight of the bigger picture of what advertising is about: people.

It's the people, duh

Programmatic conquered the world with the dream of automating manual processes and achieving audience powered targeting to deliver right-person, right-message, right-time, but it's losing its way. The $33 billion industry now struggles with fraud and wasteful imprecision and the thousands of solutions on the market offer only minor evolution – 10% more yield here, 12% less fraud there. What we really need is a revolution.

You see, browser-based cookies – the foundation of the advertising ecosystem – don't cut it anymore – and will continue to face an uphill battle for the foreseeable future. On an average day, I find myself in two cities and use four WiFi networks, four devices, three browsers, and three email addresses. That's potentially more than 30 disparate environments that have to be managed, measured and connected.

For a single advertiser to track me all day with cookies, I'd need to downsize to one device, one browser, always enable third-party cookies, and not change locations. This is definitely not where the world is headed, since Americans each own 3.6 devices (up 132% since 2012) and 43% of people worked remotely at least part-time in 2016.

No amount of new technology layered upon the humble cookie will change the fact that it's woefully inadequate for the future we're careening toward. We're going to need something more robust, truly cross-platform, and completely people-based, or we're going to wake up to find the people gone and a pile of ashes where our once great house stood. I don't use a cookie to login to Netflix, I don't use a cookie to play Xbox, I don't use a cookie to read my email, and I definitely don't use cookies to pay my bills or get access to my credit card accounts.

On the LiveIntent blog, I share predictions for next year about how new innovations like AI, PMPs, Identity, and DCO might help push us toward a world of marketing that's finally, truly, people-based. Will these technologies save red-hot #adtech from burning down in 2018? Read more here to find out.

"2018 Predictions: How We'll Save Red-Hot Adtech From Burning Down " posted in its entirety on the LiveIntent Blog.