Tourist Season

Ahhh……Advertising Week. When 17,000 members of the elite advertising community descend on New York to demonstrate their relevance, it’s a mutual admiration society ritual worthy of a $1,000+ ticket, to be certain. Parties, awards, panels, the slapping and stabbing of backs, it’s like Cannes without the style. 

Look, TSM was there man, when this whole thing started, and let me tell you, you’ve made it exactly what we dreaded it might become 20 years ago. What began as an effort to showcase the relevance and essential nature of the creative class has morphed into just another celebration of paid media tactics and tech, so much fucking tech. Data clean rooms so pristine you can eat off the floors, semantic and contextual targeting so subtle that it’s like the whispering scent of wild pine trees, and let’s not forget the belle of the *()&^#$% ball: AI. “Oh, AI, you’re so mysterious yet approachable, lovely yet refined. Everything we project upon you magically materializes”.

Most folks at Advertising Week 2024 don’t remember that the geniuses who put this shindig on 19 years ago somehow decided to schedule it during UNGA (UN General Assembly) week. That’s right, the gridlock-inducing importation of flagged limousines filled with foreign politicians coupled with the insanity of Tony the Tiger and Mr. Clean characters walking down Madison Avenue. Note that this was just a few years after 9/11, so security was incredibly high, meaning you added to this maelstrom some 10,000 NYPD officers forming a not-so-thin blue line. By the end of it all, you had this bouillabaisse of diplomats, madmen, and cops just looking at one another like the other had just landed from Mars. The only thing that would have taken it to the next level would have been doing all of this during Fleet Week so that randy U.S. Navy sailors could fulfill their furry fantasies with the assembled life-sized advertising plushies.   

Unfortunately, and predictably, the collision of AI and CTV was bound to become a “serious” discussion topic during Advertising Week 2024, and there was no shortage of experts on hand to proffer what the future holds. Let’s see if those experts are here in another 20 years to check on their work.  In the end, it doesn’t matter because, as usual, the market will decide, not the self-anointed futurists with indecipherable job titles littering midtown all week. What is clear, however, is that streaming media advertising, or ConnectedTV advertising to be more specific, is becoming a job specialty that people are just desperate to pad their resumes with, whether or not they’ve ever spent a minute developing the requisite skills to even speak knowledgeably on the topic. But that shouldn’t stop the “fake it till you make it” crowd. They’ve done pretty well in digital media for a few decades.

What could go wrong? 

Plenty, if the latest statistics are any indication. You see, the folks who control the big TV budgets for consumer brands aren’t just blindly following the CTV dogma and pouring their well-planned budgets into the opaque and confusing world that is being offered on CTV today, causing no end of heartache. Having oversupplied the market with FAST and AVOD inventory, these upstart video publishers seem to be poaching, if not sunny-side-up frying, the golden egg. And since this is putting downward pressure on CPMs for essentially the same programming avails, only delivered via IP, it works in favor of the traditional linear buyer who gets to say, “Can’t be worth much if the market isn’t valuing it more than this.”  Coupled with the bizarre idea to make CTV the next great hope of direct response or “performance” advertising, you’ve created the perfect recipe for big brand campaigns to say, “Nice for thee, but not for me.” 

This is why tourists in every city around the world are reviled. Tolerated but reviled. [Barcelona is about to resume public hangings in the center of town, I’m told.] Because they always show up in a swarm, think they know more than the locals, and leave the place a mess. And that’s why the streaming TV advertising business is lurching along like a Tesla Cybertruck on a lightly pebbled trail: the product isn’t as promised. It’s not ready to meet the needs of national brand advertisers who want to know precisely where they have aired, and it isn’t ready for the direct response advertisers who could care less about building brand affinity and treat advertising like a slot machine: money out, money in. It’s caught in this tween phase where you’re not quite sure it’s ready to stay home alone but doesn’t need a babysitter.

So here we have it. The advertising community spending a week in front of the mirror preening for each other is just too similar to the dysfunction of the UN performative displays across town. Well-intentioned as any of it may have been, it seems to service nobody but the participants. If there’s one lesson to take from two decades of Advertising Week, it may well be that the industry doesn’t have to look so hard for validation: it’s an essential part of American and global business culture with a remarkable heritage. It deserves our respect and admiration for what it already is, not only for what it strives to become. So loosen up ad people, you’re good.

And TSM is loathe to invoke The Bard, but in this case, it seems appropriate: 

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,…

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

This Week’s Music: Give It A Minute – The Fort Knox Five Stickybuds Remix

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.