Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in this guest column belong solely to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Streaming Wars. We publish guest perspectives to spark honest debate.
“What’s the biggest scam advertisers are buying into right now without realizing it?”
— Head of Ad Sales at a national AVOD service
Hello readers, you may have noticed that the Madman was MIAman for a bit this year, but I assure you and the rest of my command that I was certainly not AWOL. Look, it’s been a bit of a busy time with a few regimes to gently maneuver into oblivion and not a small amount of reconnaissance to complete before disarming a rogue nation of its isotopes. You feel me?
So the Madman is back. And I see there’s a fuckton of news on this side of the planet from the media sector, and Kirby was kind enough to hand me a megaphone to answer some of the less insipid questions.
Let’s start with the one above: what’s the “biggest” advertising scam right now?
First off, if it’s about the scale of the scam, then the answer, unequivocally, is display media. Virtually none of it has any value whatsoever to an advertiser, other than it being easy to funnel budgets into. It doesn’t create purchase intent, and is an open, bleeding, herpes sore on every fucking web page. For three decades, we’ve watched newspapers and magazines disappear because nobody is buying their ad space anymore, and they are quite reasonably confused why buyers prefer this digital garbage to their printed garbage.
Regrettably, display, mobile fraud, and other shenanigans aren’t actually the biggest scams of the day. The one that really has to be called out right fucking now is the idiocy that is “curation”.
In my day, a curator worked in a museum, drank tea, and was the last person you picked for your rugby side. Fast forward to this bizarro timeline, and a curator is anyone who gets in between a well-intentioned media buyer and seller, and somehow convinces both sides that they are adding value by taking an unearned toll. That’s right, unearned because they did nothing to improve its value to the buyer or to raise the revenue for the seller, despite sprinkling magic “data segment” pixie dust all over it.
The Trade Desk is taking no end of shit for trying to work around these Piranhas known as SSPs, who are hurting the TTD customer, the actual buyer of media. I’ll stand with J. Green on this one, he’s right, they are wrong, kill ‘em all and let god sort it out.
But the one that still makes my sphincter pucker every damn time I think about it is the rebranding of anything with a screen into “premium CTV.” When I’m at the bowling alley watching an ad I didn’t ask for, can’t hear, and won’t remember, that’s not CTV. It’s ambient advertising, and no matter how you dress it up, it is not the same battlefield.
It makes me want to bash in the head of whoever bought that plan with the 10 lb. green goddess AMF ball I’ve been rolling with since the Reagan administration.
So that’s at least part of an answer to the question. I could go on about how the hygiene of most data people are buying is like eating off the floor of the NYC subway, but that’s another column for another day.
The Madman Says
Curation is just middleman markup in a fancy wrapper.
Display is the emperor’s new screensaver.
And if that bowling alley TV is “premium,” I’m the fucking Pope.
Buy smarter, not shinier.
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The views and opinions expressed by The Streaming Madman are entirely his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Streaming Wars or its affiliates.
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