Adam… and eve.
Apple is turning 50. The digital incontinence products they showcased at their Glowtime event were so boring, the commentariat could barely muster unenthusiastic support on X. Apples. Am I right?
Now, I could ramble on about Sony. How, back in the ‘90s, Sony was the Apple of our eye. We lined up for Play Stations then the way people queue for the latest iPhones now. I remember battling my way through a mosh pit of people at Sony’s flagship store on 54th Street to get a PS3. And, the point would be that things change. That you can’t be cool forever. That few brands ever attain the lofty status. How, at best, they get their 15 minutes of fame. Thanks, Andy.
Or, I could ramble on about how people, even as recently as a year ago, wouldn’t have been game to publicly say, “Hey, maybe Apple will age out.” Because that cut against too much grain. So, no axes were grinded. Ground? No, grinded. So, people stayed quiet or said it and got laughed at. Or, said it and got so few likes that algorithms didn’t see it, roll it, and whip it onto our digital porches. So, those sayers gave up. Or, they didn’t show up at all.
But I’ve done both of those rambles. The one about a brand’s shelf life. And the other about the need for people in your life who help you see forests. I’ve done (as of this post), 422 rambles. That’s all my stories. All I can remember that relate to anything. Many on repeat.
But, as Andy Kaufman said as Latka Gravas channeling Vic Ferrari to a pretty girl at Jim’s bar on Taxi, “I bet you’ve heard every pickup line in book. So one more isn’t going to kill you.”
Google and the DOJ are sparring in court about monopolies. We all know Big G holds every property on the board. At best, the other players have turned on the waterworks because all they have are railroads and electric company. There are fewer players and there’s less money in Free Parking. The landscape for digital ads on the open web is fallow. And, we’re moving to newer crops. Crazily, before it’s all gone, now is the time important people have decided to quibble about how many houses are too many.
The people in the ad tech world are addicted to this case like people in the ‘30s waited for newspaper headlines about the Lindberg baby trial. Like people in the ‘70s watched the Manson trial on black and white TV. Like people in the ‘90s watched the O.J. trial on cable news. Ad techies are getting updates on X. They’re getting posts on LinkedIn. They’re taking surveys at Digiday’s website that will inform tomorrow’s column. Ironically, in a trial about ads, we’re seeing the evolution of expert citizen journalism.
The outcome of this trial matters to a large swath of the people I follow on LinkedIn and X. They post things. They write stories. Hell, they sing songs about it. And, interestingly — to me — they all are on one side of this. Google is evil. Everything the DOJ says is right. Google is going to get clobbered.
There is no other side to this story. I like being the other side. When I was in high school, my friend’s dad told me so. We grew up in Toronto. Somehow, I was a Habs fan. If you don’t know hockey, that’s akin to telling Hatfields you like McCoys. He said I did it to be pain. He’s probably right. Still, I like playing the contrarian role. I don’t need to point out that an emperor is naked. I’m happy just noticing a loose thread and yanking on it to see if the sweater unravels.
Yesterday, that opportunity presented itself in a thread on LinkedIn. A very smart person who lives and breathes ad tech, Adam, made two points about “Duty.” Duty. Hehe.
One, Adam wrote that Google has a duty to use third-party ad tech providers to get ads for Google’s YouTube business. And, two, that the Wall Street Journal and USA Today don’t get ads from third-party services when those publishers choose to get ads from Google’s ad pipeline. His post got lots of likes from the ad tech people who follow him and from people who just like to agree with the crowd.
His points struck me as… illogical. I even raised an eyebrow like Leonard Nemoy used to.
What duty does Google have to use a third-party service to get ads for its YouTube platform?
Assume — for a moment — that YouTube could get more, better, or higher-priced ads from a third party (which is unlikely bordering on laughable), serving more ads from their own pipe is NOT better for Google. Even if YouTube got an extra cent or two for ads, Google loses ad placements, revenue, and other metrics.
Asking Google to use third-party parts is like asking Stellantis (formerly, Chrysler) to buy parts from GM’s AC/Delco. Stellantis uses Mopar parts. Because Stellantis owns Mopar. You get parts from your network of parts suppliers. To me, that more than negates Duty #1.
Let’s move on to castigating Duty #2. That the Wall Street Journal and USA Today *chose* to use Google for ads, tells you everything you need to know about Google’s monopoly. There *is* choice. And, publishers *opt* not to use other providers. Now, assuming Google discloses that they won’t prioritize third-party ads for publishers who use the Google service that’s fine. Actually, to me, it seems more than fine.
But what do I know? I’m not a lawyer. I’m not an ad tech man. In fact, I’m not an ad man. I never worked in advertising. I’m not a media man because I never worked at a newspaper, at a radio station, in TV, in cable, or for a major app. I’m not a tech man because the last thing I coded was decades ago in languages that may as well be chiseled into steles. I am not duly authorized to speak on any topic because I’m not an expert in any topic.
Which is what this smart guy pointed out to me. He explained that the DOJ used the Sherman Act to force Microsoft to unbundle its browser (née) Internet Explorer from its Windows operating system. The findings of fact in that case realized that tech antitrust is all buried in APIs these days. As usual, it’s all ball bearings.
I looked at the Microsoft/DOJ Browser War filing. As a once-programmer, I long ago learned how ANDs work. As in a condition is met if and only if this *AND* this occurs.
The DOJ claimed Microsoft did three things: One, AND Microsoft refused to allow OEMs to uninstall or remove IE from the Windows desktop, AND three. Microsoft lost because they violated all three things. Microsoft’s uppance came in that DOJ forced them to allow us to easily use other browsers. Microsoft got to keep things one and three.
Funny story. Microsoft, in their defense, said that a browser relied on so many system resources that if it weren’t implemented just right it would hog things like memory and slow your machine to a crawl. And, they worried that customers who bought their Windows operating (yes, we bought things in 1994, we didn’t license our software in perpetuity — I’ve written about this too) would be disappointed in the system’s performance and dislike Microsoft. So, to ensure that Microsoft’s customers got good service, Microsoft gave their customers a browser.
Funny thing — “gave.” Microsoft gave people a free browser. Netscape was in the business of selling browsers. So, Microsoft used its monopoly power to benefit customers.
Funny thing — “benefit customers.” The point of all this antitrust stuff is to stop big companies who dominate markets from using their power to increase prices. The DOJ tries to stop monopolists from forcing us to pay more for things. As far as I know, the price of ads has been in free-fall since Google showed up. Which should be a good thing for the people who buy ads. So, which customers are not benefiting from lower-priced ads? The people who sell ads? Publishers? The same publishers that opt to use Google to find them ads.
Wait... Google helps marketers pay less. Google helps publishers squeeze the last ounce of cents out of ads. And, Google is the bad guy. I’m lost.
I think that’s what I tried to point out to Adam. “Duty” isn’t the winning monopolistic argument that lets the DOJ break up Google. And, the ad tech folks teed off on me. It didn’t matter that (a) I’m no fan of Google, and (b) think there are stronger arguments that show Google is a monopoly. No matter. Like the aging Apple, people aren’t ready to hear it. And, it well could be wrong.
I didn’t take my word for it. Wanting a good objective answer from someone who does know very sophisticated marketing and doesn’t have to hate Google because he competes with them, I asked my friend Steve what’s going on.
In the interest of (your valuable) time, I’m going to shorten up Steve’s brilliant answer.
Steve has sites plugged into Google’s AdX and “all the other ad exchanges.” That means when an ad space opens on Steve’s sites, any exchange with an ad can bid on Steve’s space. “Google always wins and they pay the most.”
It’s because Google knows more about who showed up on Steve’s site than Steve does. I’m no ad guy but I was a trader once upon a time. I think I get how this works.
To simplify ad tech so even I can understand it, I’m going say it works like this, Steve’s tells an exchange, “Someone is here at my site right now. Based on the IP address, I think this person is from Kansas City.” Third party ad exchanges have some information about the user. Google has lots. Based on relatively limited data, the best third-party exchange bid is $1. Google knowing more about this someone, bids $1.05. The tech on Steve’s site picks the $1.05 bid. Duh.
Is there some jiggery-pokery? Sure. As Steve said, “Google has an effective monopoly in the ad tech space with their ad exchange and ad server and they do abuse it.” Let’s leave the mechanics to the people who know the exact ignition timing on a ’64 Bel Air.
So, the DOJ wins. They break up Google’s ad tech stack. Then what? Steve thinks publishers will be worse off. Yep. Worse. “If you break up Google's ad tech business, do you think those advertisers are going to seek out publishers to run the ads on? NOPE.” The all-caps nope was his emphasis, not mine.
Advertisers, he believes, buy space on smaller sites because: (a) when you create a search campaign, there’s a button that says, “also run ads on display sources.” And, (b) Google attaches their targeting models to that publisher’s inventory.
Steve explains it like this. An advertiser now knows that their ad on xyz.com for apartment rentals is being served to someone who searched for apartments, watched YouTube videos for apartments or something else in the past.
“Without Google, advertisers will go to the big platforms by default,” he said. “Google’s search, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, Pinterest. Good luck to xyz.com with two million pageviews per month competing for that advertiser demand.”
As I wrote in UHF-ication, the pie for ads on sites like Steve’s xyz example is getting smaller every day. Which is Google’s defense. The market for squares on sites is much bigger than the open web which Google dominates and, perhaps, monopolizes. 78% of ads go to the closed web. The YouTubes and Facebooks.
So, what is the monopoly? I think there’s a monopoly of discourse, not recourse. Everyone is on one side. People either (a) work for Google and won’t say anything or (b) they work for a competitor to Google AND say anything negative about Google and applaud what’s said. If I were on a jury, the “Duty” argument wouldn’t sway me. In fact, it would point out to me that there *is* competition. And that Google is winning on merit.
Of course, you don’t get this discourse in what you read or in the posts you see. Steve doesn’t bother to add his voice to discussion but his voice will be drowned out or shouted down. And, further, he doesn’t need to make his position public. He’s not looking for fans and doesn’t need the press. So we don’t hear contrary positions from people like Steve. Which doesn’t force the experts we hear from all the time to make sharper arguments. They spend all that free time fielding applause from fans and hitting the “kudos” button to auto-reply to LinkedIn comments.
Those insider experts don’t need me around. I’m an outsider. That’s what happens when you grow up a Habs fan in Toronto. You don’t know all the details about the guy the Leafs picked in the fourth round. But you also don’t fall for all the hype from lopsided Toronto media written to be liked by Toronto hockey acolytes. A little distance — geographically and otherwise — gives you some valuable perspective.
Matthew Keys reminded me of that this summer. As he put it, “I spent more than a month doing precisely the wrong thing: Trying to secure interviews with people with nice executive titles at well-established places, but whose businesses embody many of the problems that this column is trying to address. About two weeks ago, it finally occurred to me that I needed to reach someone who wasn’t involved in media and entertainment, but who spends a lot of time thinking and writing about these problems: Charles Benaiah.” I very much appreciate that he added this, he “observe[s] the landscape and dream[s] up ways for it to improve.”
If you're (still) reading this, you've come this far, maybe you're willing to come a little further, here’s my take. Two points if you just whispered Zihuatanejo.
If there was a time to regulate Google it was probably when they bought AdSense in 2003. Or, any time in the last two decades. Before the rise of the all the places Steve said would get even more money if Google’s ad tech stack is scattered to the wind.
But, hey what do I know? I’m not an ad tech guy. Which is what I realized as I wrote this. I’m unduly authorized to write on any of these things. So, I think this a good time to stop. Stop this story and stop writing unCharles.
But… if you ever do want an unexpert distantly perspective rant in your inbox, just email me on a topic of great social and political import and I’ll write you one. Folks, thanks for your time. It’s been a slice. You can now return to your regularly scheduled programming. Have fun.
Epilogue.
I use Firefox as my default browser on Windows. Because I can. Now. I generally keep a lot of tabs open. And, they chew up system resources. I find myself having to close all the sessions and shut down my computer far more often than I would like. And, when I do, I generally blame Microsoft for delivering a lousy product I pay for over and over again.