It was inevitable.
The cookie that drives much of the digital adtech world is crumbling. Forgetting the technical jargon for a moment, it is the most damaging and transformative development in digital marketing and is continued evidence of the overall dismal state of digital marketing.
For most of the adtech firms, they exhibit brilliance but it is without wisdom.
The innovation and brilliance of adtech companies is that they allow advertisers to connect in diverse and wonderful ways but their potential is undermined by the blatant disregard for transparency, accountability or real-world performance.
When we pull back the lens, we realize most of these adtech firms are immature, lacking in wisdom.
They are creating huge networks of interconnected systems that trade in impressions as a proxy for people or clicks as a replacement for performance all served up on a “scalable” platform that is pitched as a viable way to grow a business.
Yet, even as the influence of many adtech firms grow, there is no ability to create an environment of trust.
There is no ability to authenticate the “person” advertisers are reaching in a digital publication is real.
There is no ability to efficiently harness the brilliance of digital media to create real revenue.
Worse, there is an interconnectedness in personal data within the digital world that has been harvested surreptitiously lacking data provenance or consent.
These technologies are like a fire without a hearth – quickly burning out of control; losing any ability to warm a home. This is what many advertisers are experiencing right now with digital marketing.
That is what the next generation web should be about. Not just data or targeting creep but about an overt push to technically add trust into the ecosystem. The next generation web should be about how to apply human wisdom in the form trus) into the online world.
We should not call this next generation web, Web 3.0 (after all – that refers to a software release). We should call this next generation web, The Trusted Web.
Human wisdom — well applied in the digital world.
