Who is responsible for value in the media supply chain? The question has been almost lost in the maze of suppliers that cram the middle of the online display ad sector. But there is still only one answer: the publisher. The publisher -- the content creator -- is responsible for the value that gets created online.
Arbiters of that value are the consumers. They evaluate the quality and relevance of online content everyday and award content providers with their attention, once or repeatedly. When they feel like it, they tell their friends.
The back and forth exchange -- between content and consumer -- releases value nutrients into the media atmosphere that attract advertising, which in turn emits money, which content recycles in order to flourish and produce more consumer value.
In turn, other microbes are sustained. Data microbes, for instance, ferry bits of value created by publishers around the ecosystem to absorb waste. Product microbes, such as video, attach to and ferry the advertising.
It's a virtuous circle of life that has taken firm hold within the larger, mature media world. But, as always, the competition is frenetic and intense. Hence, there is a sense of chaos that prevails in the display ad sector as new media shoots (and weeds) clamor for air and light.
What to do?
Nothing. Wait. Estimates are now up to $100 billion for the global online advertising business by 2015 (MagnaGlobal). New devices and opportunities continue to enhance the ability of consumers to connect. A new generation of advertising buyers is more accommodating to new media. Publishers are managing to reject parasites in the system. Resistance that comes from maturity is growing. It's a process.
Value conditions will improve in the display market. Advertisers and publishers will be increasingly drawn together because publishers manufacture the consumer relationships on which advertisers feed -- the relationships, that is, not just the audiences.
Meaning?
Meaning, brands are relationships. They are carefully bundled packages of trust and attitude. Otherwise, what is one bar of soap compared to another? Both of them clean and rinse away. What is one airline compared to another? Both fly to the same destination. What is one car compared to another? Both stop and go. Brands are possessed of sensitivities that make them shy and risk adverse and susceptible, positively and negatively, to tiny alterations in the atmosphere. Ultimately, these things make them different.
Consumers are like that: nuanced. Separated by looks and a history of circumstance. They are packages of trust and attitude. As with brands, they are deeply influenced by environment. Which is why consumers adapted so well and so quickly to the internet. Its ability to distill content and refract traditional media programming and publishing schedules changed the world from mass to vertical and from "appointment TV" to "always on." Content divided and grew roots and entered a new age of "personal." Not community-driven media like television or aspirational media like magazines. Or informational media like newspapers. New media is me media. Perfect for brands.
Content exudes personal value. Consumers absorb personal value. Advertisers will gather that value as bees gather nectar and distill it as part of their unique brand mixture to sustain their small, but important, differences. Brands are fragile packages of trust and attitude, and they rely on getting as near as possible to the source waters of consumer media value: content.
Science and technology have never altered the laws of nature, and 15 years of internet travail have taught us the same. Technology can enable, test, observe, and measure, but it is never the thing to tame or reconcile. Technology can gather, but it does not consume. It can be taught the differences, but it does not care. It can search aggressively, but it does not want. Technology can develop into a robot, but robots have no use for brands.
Only people have use for brands. Ergo, 15 years or more of trying to convert advertising into a technology business has been a fool's errand. "Adtech" is a misnomer. It does not describe the problem or the opportunity that confronted the advertising world at the time of the internet's incubation, which was a media problem, not a technology problem. It was a people problem.
Who is responsible for people in the media supply chain?
The answer to that question is the publisher, and it predicts the future of display advertising online.
Jarvis Coffin is CEO of Burst Media.
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