There's a recent Opinion piece in the New York Times that further perpetuates myths about digital marketing that should have been debunked years ago.
I disagree strongly with this article. And except for select parts, it could have been written 20 years ago. I
started working in the ad tech industry in 2000 at Mediaplex. As far as
I know, we were the first people to come up with behavioral targeting,
though being on the buy side rather than the sell side, we could only
use it to select creative rather than the advertiser. I left in 2014,
when it had frankly become mechanical and boring rather than an
innovative frontier.
First
of all, advertising in concept is no different from what it's always
been. Advertisers try to reach interested buyers, or in the best case,
create interest by showing ads to people they hope are interested. People
try to be clever and scare you by saying, "You aren't the customer, YOU
ARE THE PRODUCT!" As if we weren't ALWAYS the product! The
idea that they target people with certain preference or lifestyle
choices is not new. Sports sections have always run stamina and baldness
ads. The audience at Harper's Bazaar is different from the one at Field
and Stream. This has *always* been a profiling game.
Second,
ads have always included advertisers who are misleading or exaggerated.
"Buyer beware" is part of the deal. We all know this. Despite that, I
have been very happy with online-ad driven purchases that have alerted
me to concerts I want to see as well as some products like the Grateful
Dead metal logo that is now on my new car, or a free custom photo book
that they usually charge $150 for but wanted me to try them out.
Third,
and this is the one that people really don't want to admit, is that
advertising is the tool that provides free content. Ads always paid most
of the freight for newspapers and magazines. It was less obvious when
it was a subsidy, and you still had to pay a subscription price. But the
reason newspapers are dying isn't because you can read the news for
free. It's because Craigslist and the like absolutely killed the value
of want ads. It's another unintended consequence of the Internet, and
Craigslist does no banner ads or targeting.
People
have grown up with the Internet thinking that reading anything you want
or using Google Maps or having an email address are all free because
the Internet is a technology that makes them free. That is a COMPLETE
LIE people like to tell themselves. Those things are free BECAUSE
someone else is willing to pay for them. And those people are
advertisers.
People
complain about compromised privacy, but if you make access to content
"Free" if they'll only surrender some, they can't wait to click "Yes."
We saw the same thing 30 years ago when people would give their personal
information to anyone who would give them airline miles.
The true downside risk of the industry to society are these:
1)
Advertisers are happy to target ads at stupid people because their
money is just as green. Technology gives them greater ability to find
the bigger fool.
2)
The same technology can be used to manipulate the spread of fake news
to the audience that wants to eat it up. Stupid people again... see
point #1.
3)
The technology only stops short of knowing people's actual identities
with names by convention and compliance. There is the possibility of bad
actors looking to do more than just sell products or swing an election.
THIS is something worth focusing on.
If
you're a teacher, fireman, or musician and you meet someone who asks
you what you do for a living, it's easy to have a conversation about
that. 20 years ago, when I told people I worked in Internet Advertising,
they'd have one question before the conversation died: "So are you
responsible for those annoying pop-up ads?" 35 years ago if I told them I
wrote software for the phone bills, their one question would be, "Can
you give me free phone calls?"
At
this point, I have little sympathy for the fears of people who are
suddenly freaked about what a big threat digital marketing is to the
fabric of society. My own wife tried to use a Netflix special to claim
more expertise than me in this area a few years ago and I asked her if
she even understood what I did for a living for 15 years. Because I
sure understand a lot more about what the psychotherapist experience is
after being married to her for 20.
