The Center Cannot Hold - Jaffer Ali - MediaBizBlogger

amp160Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconerThings fall apart the center cannot holdMere anarchy is loosed upon the worldamp8230William Butler Yeats from The Second Comingamp160There are times when poets understand and communicate so much better than those of us who can only dream of writing poetry As we face the financial maelstrom in our markets and economy can anyone doubt that quotsomethingquot is terribly wrongWhat exactly is wrongWe have chaos volatility and experts the falconers in Yeats39 poem admitting that they know not where the future leads The falcon has ceased obeying the falconer because the maelstrom is too loud and overpoweringThe online advertising world is caught in the same cacophonous vortex despite those who still insist that the center will hold In the face of undeniable evidence that our industry is in the eye of a storm with a manifestly uncertain direction it is they who are delusional If we switch from the lyrical beauty of the poet to the real politik of renowned strategist John Boyd we move closer to the answer Boyd the chief strategist of the first Gulf War outlined how a model of reality becomes more unstable as the second law of thermodynamics asserts itself in the form of entropyBy definition as entropy increases instability results Chaos reigns and unpredictability becomes the norm In effect the quotcenter cannot holdquotBoyd spoke about the dialectical process of destruction and creation Experts can try to patch the model currently in place but all such attempts bring more and more instability It is like taping together a condemned house in a hurricaneThere is growing evidence that the current online model is becoming as unstable as our financial markets For example 10 years ago banners would yield a 5 CTR This was without the benefit of complex mathematical models Today even with the most sophisticated algorithms touted by our best and brightest quants a quant is a believer in quantitative analysis the average CTR now reports in at around 03 Viewed another way last decade39s 95 failure has devolved into a virtually complete failure You know you39re in trouble when you long for the days when only 95 of your money was wasted What progressThe solution to declining performance has been to cull ever more consumer data Browsing and purchasing information have been subsumed into ever more mysterious and chic computational models that have become blueprints for precisely what doesn39t work This mathematical reduction suffers from the same uncertainty that Heisenberg proved at the subatomic level The more we delve in the effect the more uncertain our cause becomes The more we invest in this data the lower our ROIquotThings fall apartand anarchy is loosed upon the worldquotIn order to save a failed model ever more intricate patches are created to prop up the notion that online media can utilize science and math to cure its ills As a result quality beauty and soul become endangered and eventually extinct Why Because quality cannot be reduced to calculation Soul cannot be reduced to quantitative erudition Transcendence does not fit into Google39s model Google utilizes the same mathematics that has facilitated the destruction of our financial markets and the demise of our trust Algorithms have replaced human interactionThere are now more than 100 million websites on the World Wide Web Has this increased choice led to an increase in quality Has more led to better Of course not Before a new online model can take root the old one must be destroyed Look at the numbers Look at the trends Next stop absolute zeroAs CPMs for banners continue their precipitous decline RON banners can be purchased for as little as 10M the proof that the quotcenter cannot holdquot becomes more compelling But just as there were those who stubbornly defended Newtonian physics in the face of more rational quantum mechanics many still cling to a flawed roadmap that leads us nowhere The sad truth is few of us have the courage let alone the ability to articulate our hopes and dreams in the open market But who can deny that our current model is hopelessly flawed Author Anais Nin had it right when she saidThere came a time when the risk to remain tight in thebud was more painful than the risk it took to blossomAnais NinI do not fear the maelstrom because simple logic demands that the center cannot hold Besides we deserve better The falconer deserves a clearer voice the falcon a clearer skyamp160 quotThe Second Comingquot CompleteTurning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer Things fall apart the center cannot hold Mere anarchy is loosed upon the worldThe blooddimmed tide is loosed and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned The best lack all conviction while the worst Are full of passionate intensitySurely some revelation is at hand Surely the Second Coming is at hand The Second Coming Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun Is moving its slow thighs while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle And what rough beast its hour come round at last Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born William Butler Yeats January 1919amp160

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