Colin Wallis - Programmatic Advertising Is Dead, Long Live Consumers! Really?

Because, you know, it's annoying the hell out of consumers. You know, us, even if we are working for some of those attic organizations, as, as people, it can be really abusive the way that it can inconvenience upset your, your user experience. So I thought it was a useful thing to talk about in the, in the context of a consumer identity and access management conference. But the thing is the slides aren't mine.

They're actually, most of them being put together by another Canara member, a unity, a unity is one of what happens actually in that you tend to get communities of interest come because they're interested in a particular tool. And they're interested in trying to work with the, with the generic tool and get it, you know, overlay or profile for their particular community. And that's what, that's what that's what's happened with with the programmatic advertising.

Clearly not all of them, right, but, but certainly some folks who want to change the way that things are, who are advocating for change and want to want to direct that. So that's really what this was about.

And, you know, we have this, this is the classic case, isn't it that you want, you got cars, you wanna buy a car, you go to your site. And then all of a sudden, of course, show you cars, car ADSS way after you bought the car, you know, and it carries on, okay. And you know, this is the problem where you get the sort of, kind of creepiness that comes in. How is that possible? And actually, I must tell you a story of when I was doing the research, I did do actually some work for this. It wasn't unity. Didn't do absolutely everything.

And when I was doing some work for this, you know, Canara being a 50 cash nonprofit, cause we're using Google tools, the, the, the free tool set. So without unsolicited and you know, I've, I've never really got into this, into this area before I have, I have emails, a string of emails from a Michelle Lee, from Google digital marketing. Who's picked up the fact that I was browsing on a Chrome browser, that I was browsing double click for publishers and adds, these are the, these are the Google advertising tools.

And, and I get unsolicited emails. I told her, I'm not interested. I get another one. I'm going this time. If she doesn't back off, I'm going to threaten her with legal action. But this is, this is the, this is the price you pay for.

You know, I was just browsing a using Google and, and that's, this is what I get, right. So I get more than ads. I have emails and calls for meetings and so on.

So, you know, it is quite scary. And you, you get this sort of, kind of going back to ads, you get, you get this sort of, kind of erosion because you get ad ad weary, you know, and you know, we've got Mr. Advertiser here saying, trust me, everything's fine. And you know, but it's not actually, it's not.

And, and one of the, I would, I can't think into the, into the minds of the, the legislators of GDPR and, you know, we have some folks who are much closer to it than I, but I would suggest that because the antic industry didn't exercise any kind of self restrain that, that actually caused the problem. Okay. I think it was a, I would suggest to you that that, that the failure of the industry to, to exercise some self straight has actually caused the, the issue that regulation has to be the last resort.

And in fact, it's been enable and, you know, it's a, this is sort of a, kind of a smoke stack imagining I'm, I'm giving you a kind of a, a vision of in the industrial revolution. You know, here we are, we're creating widgets and we've got this incredible collateral damages. We are producing our, you know, buttons or whatever it might have been in the 19 hundreds.

We've, we've actually got that equivalent. Now we've actually got that in, in advertising, in, in an internet age, we've got the same sort of problem. And this is how it's done. It's done with cookie matching that's. And I'm not gonna say that all advertising has done this way, but a substantial amount of it. And we'll talk about a little bit about the, the other options that are available. And a lot of it is done by cookie match.

And, you know, with this, this piece of research and this report from, from our friends Canara members as well, the internet society is pretty horrific. 27% of your browsing history could be captured in the so, you know, it's, it's pretty awful. Now who's this guy, anyone recognize that face docs that's right.

Project, VRM Martin, MIT, Harvard. And of course, for those who know doc well, and though the, the, the project VRM, well, it's a mailing list effectively.

I, what I did is actually, this is, this is doc's people's people versus adtech. Now, those of you who, who follow some of doc's staff will know that, you know, he's, he, he was a coworker of the glue train manifesto. And then after flu train, he did the intention of economy. And of course, docs, dos got two sort of points of view. One is that, that the intention economy, this notion that you decide to go and buy something, you'll actually invite the vendor community to, to sell to you, to pitch to you what, what you want. It's one side of it. And the other is no tracking.

So I, you know, I don't, I certainly, I, I'm not completely convinced on his first thing that the intention economy is really gonna take over the world, but I am pretty convinced. I, I pretty well support the, the, the no tracking me.

So, you know, he's not alone. You know, he's a, he's a pretty large organization that actually agrees with him to, to the extent that, you know, one might, but you know, his Salesforce, who's basically saying that it's sloppy work, you know, everywhere, you're saying, you're saying it's sloppy work, except for this guy.

Now, this guy, Randall Rothenberg, he's the chief executive of the interactive advertising bureau and the co the collaborators on the other side of the Atlantic, the E D a a, well, you know, of course, Randall wants to continue the status quo. Of course he does.

You know, because it's, it's mass exploitation on a, on a global scale. Why wouldn't he, because they've made a hell of a lot of money out of it.

And, you know, pernicious assault on the free media, that's actually referring to EPRI regulation, by the way. And of course the apocalyp apocalypse of, of ad blocking, oh my God. You know, and, but hang on a minute, Andy, how did this, you know, why, why were these tools created?

What, what was the, what happened to make this behavior come in? Well, you know, we know there were, there were, it was, it was the fact that it was a sloppy work on the, on behalf of the antic industry.

And, you know, one of the first things that's came out, this, we had ad blocking, but we have actually a handful of other tools, just a small handful. And it's nice to say that, you know, consent receipts, Uber, and the little circle up there, the four circles, that's customer comments, and it's, it's not filled in yet, but each of those little circles will actually have the, the terms, the user submitted terms do not track me or track me only on this particular ad only for one year for, you know, I'll, I'll use only third party, first party sharing.

That's an example of, of what's gonna happen. There it's actually, it was just, I think in two sessions ago, we, we were having this conversation and I can't remember who it was in the audience on the panel was saying, oh, well, you know, the, the, the legal effects aren't done, the legal work, you can, you can't connect the icon to the, to legal work. That's not true. You go into can Tara's Wiki on the user submitted terms project, you'll see, in draft the, the actual legalese, that's been connected to those users, to the terms sitting in that icon.

And, you know, but it's, but it's a fairly, it's a fairly small bunch. Okay. It's representative.

I mean, you know, the brave browser, you know, there are probably 10 browsers or something like that that are, that are compatible now the internet too, you know, with the consent inform, attribute, release, jailing labs, it's straight out intention, economy, work bay cloud, and the UK, basically a cookie, a cookie blocker. So yeah, that pretty much covers it. But then look at the competition on the other side, this is, this is what happened to the ad tech industry. This is if there was ever a case of following the money, this is it. And that's actually what it looks like. Right?

So the best, just take that again. That's pretty much a representative of, of, of the, the, the tools that we have at our disposal today. And that's what we're we are working against.

So, so back to said, cash strap, non-profit with volunteer efforts, you know, we're doing the best that we can, but it is an unfair playing field. And the starting of this, of the point of this presentation was that not only are consumers disadvantaged and inconvenience, but actually publishers are as well. Cause you know, what happens when people go and they get those annoying ads, they start blaming the brand, or they start blaming the publisher pointers. These people have no idea that their stuff is being dropped, where it is it's out of their control.

And I'm not, I'm not saying in every, in every instance and in every case and completely, but by and large, it's out of their control. And I dunno who that, who England is playing there. Cause I just, I spent hours trying to work out which rugby team has the black shorts, but I haven't worked it out yet. So is no it's Wales anyway.

So yeah, basically this is what happens is that in fact, a lot of the money in advertising is actually being focused around the agency and the, an tech side. In fact, very little of it is going to the publisher.

And, you know, there's a, a fair amount of discussion about how we can, you know, the, the, the role of the publisher and how it's actually being undermined effectively. There was a time, you know, in advertising where used to the order bureau circulation, you opened up book tells you how, what your what's your circulation was for that magazine, what the audience was. And you'd be actually have an underground based effectively a pricing schedule for that, that metrics, if you like of, of, of magazine to, to market.

And of course that's effectively been taken away from the advertiser, not saying that we should go backwards, but I'm giving you an idea here of just how European advertising is shaping up. Those are big, big numbers. And of course, it's all gonna change on my birthday next year, and it's gonna change because of this and out of the six options that you have. And in personal data, these two are the most obvious for advertising legitimate interest and consent. You can imagine the IAB is at this area, lobbying Preuss. The many of us are at the other end, including some in the industry.

So, yep. It's becoming a dominantly justification. And we know we've had actually a number of discussions about this this week is that you have to separate out the, the notion of consent away from your terms of service and your privacy policy.

And, you know, there's been a number of issues with privacy with, with consent over the years. And we are slowly getting there with the way that we're starting to get them. And the problem is that we've actually for the publishers, they've only got these two places really. Let me just try and get that again. The publisher network, you know, the brand, you might have several brands under one single operation or the brand itself. Those are very few places you can catch a consent.

And well, these guys were, were suggesting that they, what they, what that comes to can Tara to do is to take the consent receipt and overlay it for, for the ad industry. And that's basically what they're trying to do here. So it's just try and pick up how that would work. So they captured consent, right. First stage, and then they actually base the ad on the captured consent. Yes. I'm. I wanna see I'm okay to have Nike ads or I'm okay to have everything from the Coca-Cola corporation, which might include minute made orange juice. And then I stick it on my platform.

So these are some of the advantages there, and this is basically what it looks like. It also looks like that machine readable. And what does this mean if you like for, but it helps the advertiser because, you know, an end of consumer fewer ads, higher value, I can get that back again. And the last thing is better quality, but better user experience as well. And so it's a win-win and it actually levels that playing field in a way that it's certainly not there today.

And of course the gold standard, actually, if anyone's wondering what the, the little B piece and, and you know, it don't, you it's French Gar, right? That's it.

I, I had to look that up right. Who would've known. There was a pass part of the European union in the Northeast coast of south America. Okay. I dunno.

Well, actually, I'm over there, but doesn't not to not to worry a recent, a recent European shall say so. Yes. It's gonna be interesting. And to back to the original, as my final slide, back to the original premise, you know, it is programmatic advertising dead, I would say, no, it's not, but it's the behavior it's definitely gonna change. And it's either gonna change in one of two ways. It's either consent.

And, and the reason why there's another one is that in fact, actually some of the studies around consent is that, is that actually, there's gonna be a very poor take up rate for advertising when advertisers, when agencies ask for that consent and the way that the GDPR is written, very few people say that they're going to actually accept it. It's like 20%, there's almost an 80% rejection. Okay. So this is, and that's of course the worrying hell out of folks at the AOB, but the other option is course not to use any personal data at all. And that's, and basically do placement ads.

Wouldn't it be great to actually go to, I'm not, I'm not particularly a sort of a retroactive retrospective sort of, kind of guy, but just think of the possibility that when you are looking for jewelry, you go to a jewelry site and you'll see jewelry ads. Isn't that great? Isn't that? Wouldn't that be lovely?

Anyway, the thought is that whatever happens, it's probably gonna be a change for the better. Thanks. Thank you. Thank just a few.