"This is my first MadTech Insider blog post, so I thought I would try to make this as engaging as possible for all of you who have subscribed. I thought long and hard about how I would structure these posts, and the conclusion was a simple one: use a central industry theme as a framework that will interest the investor community and smart subscribers.
The theme I have decided to hang my narrative around for this post is the ‘anonymous web’. It is, for me, ad tech’s biggest opportunity this decade. The companies that can make marketing spend work in this new, cookie-barren media wilderness will be MadTech’s success story.
So, what is the ‘anonymous web’?
The term ‘anonymous web’, when relating to digital marketing, was not coined by me. I am giving that accolade to Andrew Casale, CEO of Index Exchange. I first saw it in a keynote presented by Andrew, almost two years ago, at an Index partner conference in London.
With the deprecation of third-party cookies across Safari and Firefox, Casale pointed out that a good chunk of the open web could not be targeted or measured. Without an ID, most of the baseline capabilities (people-based marketing, attribution, frequency capping, targeting, etc) were now impossible.
This would seriously damage the viability of the open web for marketers when spending money. In this scenario, marketers would likely opt for the walled garden, with all its first-party targeting and ‘measurement’ capabilities, instead of going blind in the open web.
He went on to argue that Google would follow suit with Chrome. Many in the room did not agree with him. It would be inconceivable, they said, that Google would want to sacrifice its multi-billion dollar, third-party business by introducing similar privacy functionality as its peers.
But Google is in the business of looking after Google’s interest; the industry be damned. Twelve months later, Andrew was proven correct when Google announced it was phasing out third-party cookies in its browser.
It’s easy to get irked at Google any time of the day. From gaming the programmatic ecosystem to general cock-blocking of the internet, Google rarely fails to attract the ire of the average ad tech punter. But in this case I don’t think anyone can blame Google for making this move.
Restrictions on third-party cookie use in Chrome was inevitable. This had to happen - and was going to happen. The advent of GDPR and the increased scrutiny on use of data (as well as the massive threat of eye-watering fines) made the rise of the anonymous web a certainty.
The anonymous web is hugely important for ad tech as it represents the big opportunity in the decade ahead. The authenticated web will be restricted to those users actively logging into websites. The scale will simply not be enough to compete with Google, Facebook, Amazon and stealth-walled-ad-garden Apple.
Below is a graphical overview of this new authenticated and anonymous digital marketing landscape, giving a better understanding of where ad tech vendors can add real value for advertisers and media owners. ..."
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