…that Google and FB would just get out of the ad Business (not including search). They’ve really made a mess of things. Behind the curtain I get the feeling they are a bunch of snots who think they are smarter than everybody else. Meanwhile, they’re cheating by spying on everyone including their competition, hiding their metrics and lying about their audience.  Worst of all, they are perpetuating a hoax about consumers.

And so it goes.. today’s consumers are demanding. They expect to be presented with stimuli, ever more increasingly. They want things to be personal. They are curious, impatient and demanding. Their expectations accelerate with discovery. Consumers live to be delighted, crave frictionless experiences and only marketing technology can solve for all this.

I swear there’s a template for this narrative for ALL VP’s of Digital Solutions that goes something like this: “MarTech is to Consumers as Parents are to Children”.

Nobody wants advertising; they deal with it. At best, it’s a minor nuisance. More than 600 Million ad blockers have been downloaded. Tracking will be illegal right here in Europe next year. What else needs to be said?

Do you know what every single child that I’ve ever observed tapping around an iPad or smart phone does when they are on YouTube? Skip the ad. 100% of them, 100% of the time. Conversely, do you know what every single child that I’ve ever observed watching cartoons on TV says during the commercial break? “I want that”.

I think the powers that be know this. And so since the ad model is broke, the next best thing that can be done, as long a shot as it might be, is try to convince people it’s not.