The Center Cannot Hold - Jaffer Ali - MediaBizBlogger

Turning 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 world…
--William Butler Yeats, from The Second Coming*

There 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 "something" is terribly wrong?

What, exactly, is wrong?

We have chaos, volatility, and experts (the falconers in Yeats' poem) admitting that they know not where the future leads. The falcon has ceased obeying the falconer because the maelstrom is too loud and overpowering.

The 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 entropy.

By definition, as entropy increases instability results. Chaos reigns and unpredictability becomes the norm. In effect, the "center cannot hold."

Boyd 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 hurricane.

There 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 0.3%. Viewed another way, last decade's 95% failure has devolved into a virtually complete failure. You know you're in trouble when you long for the days when only 95% of your money was wasted. What progress!

The 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 doesn't 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 ROI.

"Things fall apart...and anarchy is loosed upon the world."

In 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 Google's 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 interaction.

There 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 zero.

As CPMs for banners continue their precipitous decline (RON banners can be purchased for as little as $.10/M), the proof that the "center cannot hold" 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 said:

There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the

bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

--Anais Nin

I 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 sky.

* "The Second Coming" Complete
Turning 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 world;
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely 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 1919