Did it have to be this way?
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Last week I wrote about the decline in Google’s Network business, and this week Eric Seufert really slid the dagger in with the headline “Google’s Network business is vestigial”($$). We differ a bit in our analyses but both agree that part of the underlying problem is the secular decline of the open web as a viable media and advertising model. Eric’s last paragraph is so dire:
Alphabet’s Network business increasingly looks anachronistic, supporting the consumer engagement models of a bygone period. This partially explains the scandals that have repeatedly emerged in the open web related to advertiser spending being inadvertently directed to MFA websites. It’s possible that, with consumer engagement having shifted to walled gardens and apps, MFA inventory may simply represent the preponderance of what’s left to buy in the open programmatic web. -- MobileDevMemo
So today I’m going to ask a tough question: Did it have to be this way??
What does Meta have that we don’t, anyway?
A bunch of years ago I met with an entrepreneur in the ad tech space and he asked me “who sets the standards for creative formats?” The IAB, I responded, quite obviously. “No, it’s been Facebook for at least ten years and you just didn’t notice.” Burn.
It is easy to underestimate the benefits of advertising on the big social platforms since they appear from the outside to be limited and isolated. How could one app be better than hundreds of the best journalistic and independent websites? And if you say “they have all the data”, it’s actually about a lot more than that.
Let’s break it down. How exactly is a closed system like Meta better for advertising than the entirety of the open web?
Come at me in the comments. I know you will. But, but, but democracy is at stake! Meta doesn’t actually have the best personalization, they trick you using their own metrics! I’ve heard it all.
Why can’t we have the nice things?
The problem with the web is, and always has been, fragmentation. There have been many attempts to make our open system more uniform — standards, policing, cooperatives. And while there have been big successes, like the adoption of ads.txt, the whole has remained largely wild and well…open.
It didn’t have to be this way. There were several chances when either Google or Facebook or someone else could have wrapped up the open web into a tidy bow for consumers and advertisers. This would have come with loss of control, but may have been ultimately worth it.
Both Google and Facebook had opportunities to build the "full stack" you need to really make open web comparable to closed web. Let me lay it out:
Google's "full stack" publishing solution:
Facebook's "full stack" publishing solution:
Publishers might have thrived if one of these two behemoths had executed properly and made content and news consumption a little more like the closed web. Google couldn’t do the consumer-facing part, and Facebook lost interest when they realized how much money they could print on their own apps.
Another important factor has been the very reasonable mistrust of the tech giants from the open web publishers. At every step of the way publishers have fought against giving either of these companies more control. This was my understanding on why AMP died, for example. This was totally understandable at the time, but maybe doesn’t hold up as well in the current environment. In hindsight being a sharecropper on someone else’s farm might be a lot better than seeing yours decline in yield.
We should also give a shout-out to Flipboard , a venture-funded company that has been trying to solve all of the open web’s problems for over 10 years by putting the content into a single personalized consumer app. But it never got the consumer traction or scale to make an impact.
News came out just this week that Twitter is doing news again. But Twitter lacks scale and doesn’t have a liquid ad market.
Maybe we could hold out hope for Apple News, but let’s not.
So, it’s over, huh?
After reading this, you’re forgiven for thinking that the web is dead. Not dead yet, but certainly in decline. Media companies have pivoted to CTV. The NY Times makes more money from games than news. The advertisers are finding more of their customers on retail sites through Commerce Media. When you zoom out, these are all parts of the same story, but it could have maybe been different.
This was originally published in the Marketecture weekly newsletter. Subscribe for free to get more like this.
Programmatic and Social Media Expert | Part-Time Journalist | ExhangeWire Rising Star I am a dedicated professional committed to excellence. I focus on results and delivering quality outcomes.
10 个月You’re right Ari Paparo … in this time, we can’t have nice things.
great article. let's not forget also global regulators mono-focused on regulation of the open web that lowered monetization capabilities and made the user experience tangibly worse, while at the same time giving the app ecosystem, CTV and walled gardens a free pass
Head of Retail Media & Product @ Shell North America | MBA
10 个月I think of advertising across the big platforms similar to trading blue chip stocks and advertising across the open internet like buying pink sheet penny stocks. Is there opportunity in the latter? Of course there is, but given the risk and economic climate, it's natural to see ad dollars shifting back towards safer destinations with scale and strong performance.
Helping ad/martech companies with marketing strategy, content, PR
10 个月Interestingly this is what always comes up when you get publishers together — we need to band together to compete with the walled gardens! It never seems to happen, and at this point people ought to acknowledge there must be structural reasons why (one of which is obviously that pubs see each other as competitors). I’ve heard spontaneous oral histories at events from people who know more than I about failed attempts to make this happen. But the upshot is only the biggest open web publishers have a chance to compete. And then a bunch of other long-tail stuff of dubious quality gets monetized via the open market.