Marketers – are we really such monsters?

A few days ago Which-50 Media published an article, depicting marketers as creepy monsters. Which-50 is regarded by many as one of the top marketing industry magazines, and they ran it as a cover story, no less. If that’s the way we (as marketers) see ourselves, I don’t even want to think how we’re perceived by consumers. It’s not that I don’t want to think about it. I sort-of know it already.

As an industry, we are creepy, and therefore – monsters too. 

How did that come about? Why now? 

A study conducted by Which-50 Media and PureProfile in Australia, clearly shows consumer sentiment towards advertising in general, and online advertising in particular. It’s not favourable, I can tell you that much. 

The thing is – you can make any point you want, by asking the right set of questions. In legal terms (and I’ve been a huge fan of Suits and Boston Legal, so I know!), it’s called – “leading the witness”. I’ve actually asked to see the questions asked during the study, and it was glaringly obvious what happened there. I don’t want to get too much into this particular study. You can read all about it here.

The questions missed one critical element – an alternative. The survey / study was written to prove a point, and so it did. The point they were trying to prove, was that marketers are using the available technology to gather data of consumer behaviour online, to be able to serve them the most relevant ads. 

Again – you need to ask the right audience the right questions, right? The funny thing is – if you actually ask the martech / adtech industry, they will say that advertisers still have a lot to learn about what technology can do, to track and segment and personalise ad serving. See, it’s all a matter of asking the right people, the right questions, and you can prove any point you like (and make it a news story). 

Sometime, when we read these headlines (actually, most times), we just grab the headline and run with it – develop strong emotional opinion about the content of the article, without actually reading it, thinking about its’ origin, or the probable agenda of the publisher. That’s wrong, and lazy behaviour on our part. We know it, yet we keep doing it. 

Oh, but I digress. I wanted to mention the alternative. The one which was missing from that survey. The main focus of the survey was to show that consumers aren’t happy that marketers a tracking their behaviour, recording it, and using the information, directly or indirectly, to tailor a better set of ads for them. 

The missing alternative is of course – having no ads at all! But this will come at a cost, right? So far, we’ve been enjoying free content on the web, largely due to advertising money, which covers (or does it?) the cost of the publisher. 

A bit of a history lesson

In the not-too-distant past, any advertiser who wanted to reach a particular audience, would select a magazine, choose to buy ?, ?, or a full page ad, inside or cover, left or right page, and go with it. 

Now it’s more complicated, with ad management platforms, bidding for placement and audience members, frequency and spread. But now, the consumer can pinpoint an ad they don’t want to see, and it will be replaced by the publisher or platform. The algorithm is still learning (not actual people) which ad it should serve to whom, and they don’t get it right every time. It’s still WIP (Work in progress). 

Let’s start with this assumption:

Ads are bad. They are annoying (the majority anyway). Very few (outside of the advertising industry) love adverts. 

On the other hand – producing content is expensive. Printing magazines and newspapers (or maintaining websites), is very expensive too. 

If publishers had to rely on readers to pay and cover their costs, we wouldn’t have had any newspapers or magazines today (other than political propaganda. Wait… did I really just say that?). So ads are necessary evil, which allow us to read news and educate ourselves about the world around us. For free. 

There’s no free lunch!

Nothing is free. We know that. And we also know (or should know, by now) that we trade our personal information (or privacy), to keep content free. And that’s the alternative which was missing from that survey /study / article. 

Now, back to the monsters… 

Back in the old days, we saw every advert. Whether they were relevant to us, or not. Generally – not. Now, the available technology allows marketers and publishers to use various data points, such as clicks, time on site, and finger movements on touch screens and mobile devices, to understand us better. What we like, what we ignore, and what we don’t like. 

An Algorithm (not people, not companies, but a computer code / script!) tracks our movements and preferences, and tries to match it to a pre-determined sets of parameters. Each ad has their own set of parameters, and when the two sets sort-of matches, we’re served a particular ad. 

Marketers are going through a lot of trouble, to make the ad experience more tolerable for us. They aren’t monsters, they are angels, really… 

Now let’s put the sharing of data between advertisers into perspective:

Those algorithms we’ve discussed earlier, learn best by having LOADS of data. The more data they have, the better decisions they make. So the platforms (Facebook, for example) aggregate the data they collect from multiple sessions, from multiple devices (we sign in to multiple devices, so Facebook knows it’s us, whichever device we’re using), to see what we like or dislike (not just ads, other stuff too), and build our profile for advertising purposes. Then the make a deal with a particular publisher, and agree to share our data… Ok, I’ll take it back. They aren’t really sharing our data. They provide 3rdparty access to the dataset, in order for that 3rdparty to serve better content, more relevant content to us. 

If I had asked the people what they wanted, they’d ask for faster horses.  Henry Ford

Henry Ford famously summed up his perspective about consumer savviness. The truth is – consumers often lack the required understanding to make a decision about what’s good for them and what isn’t. Consumers never thought that having a car would be a good idea. The fact is, apart from the convenience of having a more efficient and comfortable way of getting around, think of the number of jobs that that development has created – from car manufacturing to roads infrastructure, and from petrol refineries to traffic cops. Ok, that petrol thing was just a phase… Ok, driving instructors. Oh, wait… 

Back to advertising - if you really think about it – it’s a win-win-win situation:

We, as consumers, get content for free. We love the content which “randomly” appear in our feed. It’s as if the platform “knows” what we like, right? Well, it does.

Advertisers, get to show their wares to people who are likely to buy their wares. That’s the beauty of targeting the right audience with the right message. 

Publishers, get to stay in business, provide consumers with quality content, without charging them for it (other than some basic information about them), directly. 

It’s a great ecosystem, where everyone wins! Or when someone “loses”, it’s only a little loss, but with a greater win…

So – are marketers really such monsters? I thought you’d come around…