The Monday Markup: Trust Issues
The industry keeps asking itself who to rely on
Here's what caught my eye this week…
[Not] Welcome to NY
New York has passed a series of laws impacting how AI is used in media. The Synthetic Performer Disclosure Law requires AI-generated actors in advertising to be clearly labeled. The NY FAIR News Act mandates articles that are mostly AI-generated have a disclaimer. The New York Stealth Crawler Prohibition Act bans bots from extracting news content without permission or payment. With NYC being the largest media market in the country, these new regulations will heavily impact the user experience across the country.
Monica’s Markup: Expectedly, not everyone is happy about these laws, especially the synthetic performer one. Opponents are concerned about the definition being too broad and the burden it may pose to advertisers. The good news for brands is that research from MediaScience found that AI disclosure labels have little impact on brand recall and ad sentiment. Is adding a disclosure an extra step? Yes. But didn’t you also save a bunch of steps by not using a real actor? Also yes.
TAG Not It
For a decade, being accredited with the Trusted Accountability Group (TAG) was a must. Now, its grip on the industry is loosening. Mega brands like Procter & Gamble are no longer requiring digital ad partners to be TAG certified, with both Google and The Trade Desk opting to not renew this year.
Monica’s Markup: The questions companies are asking themselves are if 1) TAG has become obsolete compared to MRC and IAB standards and 2) if TAG audits are actually valid indicators of trustability. I’m personally not surprised TAG is losing support. I’ve seen too many platforms using it as a crutch without actually doing the work to protect their inventory. Historically, streaming has had less of an issue with fraud compared to the open web, but it’s not immune to the problem. Regardless of who is the validator of trustworthiness, this problem is only going to become worse if the industry doesn’t forsake short-term gains and build in real guardrails.
War of the Middle Men
Just as we’ve seen with the holdcos, the DSPs and SSPs are also aiming to cut out the other from the process. On the DSP side, you have Viant that has launched Viant Publisher Solutions, a tool that allows publishers to create a direct relationship with the DSP. On the SSP side, you have Magnite that has launched Magnite Orchestration, a capability that allows brands to directly connect their buyer agents to Magnite’s seller agent.
Monica’s Markup: Last month, AdTechGod put up a poll to ask if DSPs and SSPs will exist in 10 years. The majority chose both to survive. I chose SSPs to win out. I chose that because the DSP is the most middle of the middle men (Brand → Agency → DSP ← SSP → Ad Platform). Maybe the actual answer is really that the distinction between the two is what dies. The most risk are really the smaller DSPs and SSPs. The bigger guys will transform to a degree that the littler guys can’t compete with.
Robot Marketing
A theme that has been coming up over the past couple of weeks is the need for brands and publishers to market directly to AI. Whether you are a news website or an ecommerce brand, companies are recognizing that they have to be able to overcome the loyalty disconnect of AI-first consumers and further a system where agents can complete transactions autonomously. It goes beyond visibility to actually developing a tech stack that treats AI as a new gatekeeper for product discovery and transactions.
Monica’s Markup: As a creative person, this future of being a marketer does not look fun. Marketing is a game for who can successfully tap into the human psyche. As a scientific person, this feels like an evolution of the field. How do you tap into the human psyche when it is being aggregated into an algorithm? It’s a tough job market right now, especially for marketing. My hope is that this need for operational change is seen as a signal for why marketing strategy professionals are so critical for company success.
Thanks for tuning in!
Monica Longoria