August to July this year in our industry: hold my beer. WTF.

I love to talk about market dynamics and trying to figure out how to make all this technology work for advertisers, publishers, and audiences. The industry however seems to want to settle things in the courts – both legal and of public opinion. No doubt we need to change as an industry, but it seems that our discourse is centered around “investigations” that fire everyone up and name names but that don’t hold up under further analysis (editor’s note – we aren’t linking to the report in question). Brand safety is a hot topic, but to quote a publisher from our slack: “Interesting reports, but their accuracy is questionable.” We have enough interesting. We need accuracy. Shaming isn’t a way forward for the industry.

But to watch GARM disappear as quickly as it did is insane. X doesn’t play a big part in my life/career. I only check in because a few prominent people still post stuff there versus LinkedIn, but I usually leave disappointed because of the amount of inane crap posted there. I never think of X itself as something to concern myself with from an ad ops perspective. Of course, what I forget is that despite being a hellhole of hate, X is cheap, easy reach for advertisers, the preferred way our industry likes to transact. Hopefully this tactic fails. To quote our Base Camp Barcelona Keynote in the New York Times:

“To the extent that Elon hadn’t already burned all bridges and ties with the entire advertising community, I don’t see how this will get any advertisers to come back to X,” said Ruben Schreurs, the chief strategy officer at Ebiquity, a marketing and media consulting firm. “It’s a last-ditch effort to force brands who don’t want to be in the cross hairs of this kind of legal action to return to the platform.”

Industry efforts to build a better marketplace can’t be and won’t be stopped. Too much is at stake. I don’t know how to Elon-proof our industry, but I know we have to keep working. I have to say that when there are direct relationships between an agency or advertiser with a publisher, many of these issues go away… 

If you’re a publisher, I’d love to hear what your take is on the impact of GARM dissolving. Send us a clip of your reaction here – your perspective may just be featured in next week’s newsletter. 

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