The sites we go to and the apps we use run on data. Our data. One of the most important pieces of data comes from the sites we visit. That data comes from cookies. Cookies are little code bits that track our digital movements. They’re easy, inconspicuous, and explicitly tied to us. But they’re inexplicit. We rarely know they’re there and never know how they’re used.
For years, Google has been looking for ways to balance and harmonize ad data needs and our privacy. They may as well as have been trying to construct a square with the area of a given circle using only a finite number of steps using only a compass and straightedge. They were pie-eyed. Irrational to think they can get the data sites needs while respecting our privacy. You don’t get the abdomen toning of Bakasana meets the hammy stretching of downward facing dog from one position.
But they were troopers. They kept telling people they would find a solution. That it was just around the corner. That they would sunset cookies really soon. Really. But it never happened. Always asymptotic, never quite, uh, totic.
Now, they fessed up. Their privacy sandbox didn’t work.
Actually, it did work. It collected slightly less data about us. But even slightly less data has a really big impact on the value of the ads.
Just days ago, data showed that the price of ads drop by 60% when ads lose even a little data. No business can lose that much and stay in business.
So something had to give.
Either
{
the ad world would have to return to advertising. you know putting promotions in places we would see them to tell us about their products and the price we would pay for them.
}
else
{
google would stop worrying about our privacy, cookies would survive, and our hopes for a private internet would be dashed. actually, “-… -.– .”
}
You won’t be at all surprised to know that we lost.
No technology can replace cookie grift. So the solution couldn’t be to depreciate cookies. It had to be to depreciate advertising itself.
That would mean that the people who create, buy, place, and analyze ads would have to regress to the John Wanamaker era. They couldn’t. They have too much invested saying they know who buys what when. All John could do was know half his ads worked. And not even which half. In theory, with all this ad tech we should see way more effective ad campaigns. There would be all sorts of data to tell us that targeting the right customers lowered costs of selling and and improved performance. But we never see that data. In fact, we often see the opposite. Targeted campaigns don’t do much of anything. Well, they don’t do much of anything except employ lots of people to create, buy, place, and analyze ads.
The four largest ad agencies (WPP, Publicis, Omnicom, and Dentsu) employ 331,000 people and took in $49B in revenue last year. Based on the historical take rates of agencies, it’s a fair guess that the rest of the ad world accounts for another $25B and adds another 150,000 people. 486,000 people. That’s the government headcount of the States of New York, California, Idaho, Rhode Island, North Dakota, and South Dakota… combined. Did you really think cookies were going anywhere?
Google not being able to kill cookies tells you everything you need to know about ads.
Those stupid boxes that interrupt our digital lives are not ads. They’re data delivery systems.
Downward Facing Bakasana my fanny. This isn’t a Crain pose. It’s BOHICA.
