Vol. 3, Issue 7: Just Be Content
When I was in grade school, we used to do all of our work with a pencil - there were no computers or anything*. And when the pencil got dull, you had to sharpen it. Some kids had a small plastic sharpener at their desk that they used, but each room had this industrial pencil sharpener bolted to the wall that was communal. if you needed to sharpen your pencil, you got up walked to the back of the room and used it.
*At least, no computer that I could carry from home to school and back. There was a computer room that had what we’d now call desktop computers that pre-dated the first Macintosh that were called Apple IIc (or IIe later), but the only thing I carried home and back was a textbook full of stories for the reading section of class that I have to imagine were written for the textbook itself and no one else ever read
If you’re of a certain age, you know exactly what I’m talking about. This thing bolted to the wall had a crank that you would turn to make the sharpener rotate and a cover for the sharpener with a hole in it that you inserted the pencil into. The cover caught the pencil shavings and every once in a while, someone had to take the cover off, empty it and put it back on*.
*This was the second best job rotation in the entire class. Banging chalkboard erasers was number one
But the pencil sharpener cover had this cool feature - it had a wheel attached to the hole side of it that itself had different sized holes depending on how large your pencil was*. Most pencils were of a standard size, but some were larger than others (like younger students with not as developed fine motor or penmanship skills often have a larger pencil than normal). So if you could make the sharpener hole the size of the pencil in your hand.
*It did not accommodate a comically large pencil, such as one you would find in Pee Wee’s Playhouse
See where I’m going with this?*
*Short answer: no
Some weeks ago, I wrote a long missive about data. Since then, Google has changed their outward facing position on the method by which they will bring changes to Chrome around the usage of 3rd party cookies. We’re all uncertain of exactly how it will look or what the implications of such a change would be until Google tells us what they intend to do exactly, but this is just a weigh station on the road to changes in how identity is ascertained in that browser. We know this. When I talked about the notion of identity, I brought up what I consider to be the three important questions of ascertaining identity:
What does the medium tell us about the person?
What does the content tell us about the person?
What does the association of their usage to an identifier of some kind tell us about the person?
We discussed the first one at length*. Let’s talk about #2.
*The overwhelming response to James Stockdale’s inclusion is difficult to vocalize
The pencil sharpener story, which like all other classic Geoff Wolinetz' anecdotes of youth*, was meant to illustrate what I hope is at least a little obvious (?) - the approach to data isn’t and can’t be one size fits all if you want to maximize your opportunity. Again, we know this.
*Anecdotes of Youth is my new band
Content consumption patterns are tricky. I’ll give you an example: When How I Met Your Mother aired on CBS years ago, I watched it (typically live by appointment viewing - which I assume sounds insane to people now - or later on DVR). My 15-year old is now watching it on Netflix*. This is, almost certainly, very confusing to whatever machine is trying to figure out which way to go with ad delivery. The average consumer of that program is almost certainly not a 15-year old girl. I suspect they look a lot more like 2003 Geoff, so I’m guessing the ads she’s delivered are pretty irrelevant for her. Which is a problem, right? We agree that’s a problem.
*I think the worst part is that my kids use my profile because we haven’t flipped theirs to adult profiles, and so she’s watching HIMYM and my son watched Young Sheldon and now my recommendations are clogged with some stuff, you guys
It is, of course, less of a problem in CTV because of device identifiers and all kinds of other 1st party sign in data that people agree to allow providers to leverage to make some of these problems not exist. That’s one of the things that makes CTV so valuable (and I’ll add why content creators need to hold the line on CPMs in that format). I’d say the problems of CTV exist in other realms, as I’ve discussed ad nauseum. But for the moment, let’s pretend my kid is watching this program in a cookieless browser, like Safari now or Chrome at some point through an online video mechanism (perhaps one with a companion banner).
Without a cookie, we’ve got to rely on a whole bunch of other stuff - perhaps she’s authenticated as herself on whichever platform she’s watching. Perhaps she’s had her identity inferred through a vendor of some kind (ID bridged). Perhaps, in the absence of those two things, she’s being given an ad contextually based on the content and assumed interest of those watching.
What kind of ad is she getting? What kind of experience is she having? How relevant is the advertising?
Even the biggest fans of cookies recognize just how intrusive they really are. They’re with you, in some cases indefinitely, tracking your entire internet footprint - no matter how personal or embarrassing* - and then delivering you all manner of sponsored search, targeted advertising and god knows what else. Not only that, there are massive security risks around hackers and data theft that drive the ability to take your browsing history, but can mimic you and take a lot of other personal information (banking data, credit cards, SSNs, etc). Huge potential identity theft a go-go up in there.
*Not speaking from personal experience, but I heard from a friend
And it’s not just a matter of how; it’s a matter of when. This is happening in one way or another. Large industry bodies around the world are working to make sure it happens in a way that doesn’t unfairly advantage anyone, but it’s happening in some way, shape or form. And when we talk about how to advertise and reach consumers in that context, we’re gonna have to do it in a way that respects their content consumption patterns and delivers them advertising based on things other than just ancient personal identifiers with large associated risk.
I’m actually a pretty big fan of contextual advertising, generally speaking. I think it solves a handful of problems. I think it’s accurate enough that you get reasonable results, but not so accurate that it approaches the far right of the Uncanny Valley. I think if specific algorithms are smart enough, they begin to learn the consumption patterns of the context and get a bit smarter in a feedback loop around performance. And frankly, depending on the KPI, it’s a pretty efficient channel generally speaking.
I don’t want to pretend there’s no waste in contextual advertising. There’s waste in everything, including what I’m typing right now. Because in this specific us case, targeting my kid contextually is probably not the right thing to do*, but everything is about the likelihood of consumption. Even things that are 10% likely actually happen all the time**. We have to be comfortable with the notion that there’s a balance to be struck between waste and privacy. That’s just the way it has to be.
*An ad for, say, Budweiser would be wasted on her for a few reasons - independent of whether she’d actually drink a Bud or not. She *is* in high school.
**In aggregate, 10% of the time to be precise, but of course the narrower you go in sample, the likelihood of outliers increases
It occurs to me now as I circle back to the start of this that while I sharpen my metaphorical pencil around certain things all the time, I haven’t sharpened an actual pencil in years. I guess that’s a good thing? Fewer trees felled as a result of less pencil and paper being used. But man, the sound those things made when you turned the handle and sharpened the pencil was so gratifying.
If I’m reading the room correctly, you’re watching the Olympics.
I watch at least some of the Olympics every single night. And while everyone may have opinions of whether something is deserving of being in the Olympics, I have to say watching these people perform at this level is absolutely stunning every time.
And so I’ll end by sharing this tweet that I think we all can relate to:
That’s all for this week. Until next time, friends.