A Message to the Adtech Industry: If You Truly Add Value, Say So Clearly and Simply

I honestly don39t believe I39m alone in thinking quotwhat on earth was all that aboutquot when reading certain pronouncements from the adtech industry I don39t think I39m particularly dumb but I really struggle to understand what the endbenefit is from so many of these tools and systems And by endbenefit I mean benefit to the end client the advertiserThere are two things about most adtech that irrationally annoy me First that they attach the word quotadquot to what they do These systems may be connected to advertising in that they measure something to do with audiences numbers or behaviors But they have nothing to do with the ad business the business of producing commercial messages that persuade real people to do real thingsAs I said quite possibly irrationalThe second less irrational element is how complicated the purveyors of these things make them sound Don39t get me wrong in many cases what they do is clever beyond my understanding But true brilliance lies in making the complicated appear simpleAt Aegis and subsequently at Carat I had the great pleasure to work with Jeremy Swinfen Green He was a digital expert before such people existed I39m sure he remains supreme at what he does but back then in the 1990s he wasn39t far off from being uniqueJeremy was particularly good at making things sound simple He had to be with me around let39s be honest One story he used to tell to illustrate the commercial power of the internet was around a guy in the middle of nowhere with just a phone line a neighbor and a hunger for a pizza Imagine Jeremy would say this guy could go online search for pizza delivery companies within a fivemile radius download their menus looking for his favorite pepperoni compare ingredients and prices waiting times delivery costs read the reviews download his credit card details and order his pizzaOr he could ask his neighbor for his recommendation phone the pizza guys and place his orderThe point is that just because you can doesn39t mean you shouldI39m from an era when media in agencies was of little interest to advertisers We can all moan on about irresponsible clients not caring how their money was being spent and we can draw straight lines between then and the transparency wars of todayBut we rarely ask ourselves why clients didn39t engageOne reason was that we were so terribly boring We talked in a language only we understood We confusedYou might ask why and the best answer I can give you came from Irwin Gotlieb Global CEO at GroupM To paraphrase from the wisdom of Irwin quotIn confusion lies marginquotThat policy did indeed work for a good while but look where it led us To a place where media agencies are not trusted by their clients where clients would rather handle their own negotiations than risk being fleeced and where our obsession with meaningless metrics like clicks impressions and the rest has driven creativity into the background at the same time we convince ourselves that quotwe39re being accountablequotAnd worst of all to a place where consumers actively dislike ads especially online adsI39m with Bob Hoffman in loathing how tracking is used and what it39s done to the industry But what is far more important than what Bob and I think is what consumers think The proponents of online tracking talk a lot about relevance but there39s a fine line between relevance and stalking We cross that line far too often If advertisers knew the half of what goes on in adtech how much fraud exists how disliked excessive frequency and retargeting is amongst their customers they would spend an awful lot lessJust as well for the adtech business that we don39t understand it isn39t it And that we39ve come too far to admit it by asking the right the simple questionsThe trouble is history tells us that eventually the paying customer asks enough of the right questions to understand enough about what39s going on to work out what to do And what to do involves ensuring that value is added at a price worth payingIf you truly add value then say so clearly and simply Talking in tongues doesn39t work Take it from an old oftbitten gitClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet

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A Message to the Adtech Industry: If You Truly Add Value, Say So Clearly and Simply

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Brian Jacobs

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