The future of advertising: Your chance to make a difference
Opinion
Advertising: Who Cares? aims to make advertising and its ecosystem better. But what can we practically do to design a better future? Here are some immediate focuses.
A few weeks ago, I attended a public meeting regarding the present state of the UK nation. At the start, one of the speakers asked the audience: “Generally, do you think the UK is in a good place right now?”
And he asked us to raise our hands if we thought it is. No-one did.
What if we asked this question about the advertising industry? How many hands would go up?
We know this depends on multiple factors. Many people are happy with the status quo, especially younger people who enjoy being part of a dynamic industry. Those businesses that benefit disproportionately from the skewed economics of today’s ecosystem will also be quite content.
There is still much to like and reasons to be cheerful.
However, there are also many people from a variety of backgrounds and places, and across the age spectrum, who think both advertising and the advertising industry can be significantly improved. And who wouldn’t want that?
The future of advertising: reasons to be cheerful… but realistic
Practical steps
The Advertising: Who Cares? (AWC) movement has only one aim, which is to make advertising and its ecosystem better; for the public, the people who work in our industry, the plethora of businesses that ply their trade in it, the health of the ad-funded media sector and the planet.
The question is: what can we practically do to design a better future for everyone?
We’re about to find out.
The AWC launch event in September, and the highly positive reaction to it, encouraged us to continue our iterative process and take the next steps. We have had extraordinary support from all parts of the industry and the world, and our supporters are committed to helping seek ways to make life better for everyone.
We have been at pains to avoid reiterating the problems and obstacles; we know what they are. What is needed are diagnoses, ideas and solutions.
Crucially, these must take into account the world as it is, not some mythical ideal. They have to address the world of infinite advertising opportunities in content and channels, and the imbalance in how money and resources are currently distributed.
Our solutions need to be realistic and have to be universal, applying to any channel. They don’t necessarily have to be right for everyone who advertises — some businesses will be happy to continue with what they do now and will use new tools such as AI to do more of it — but they have to have relevance to the majority of industry players.
They also have to encourage healthy relationships among those players in the ecosystem on both the buy and sell side, and everyone in between.
We also have to be brutally honest about the actual present shape of the industry, the multiple overlapping business models that drive it and the unprecedented pressure on everyone to do more with less money, time and resource when infinite permutations should require more of them.
Best-in-class thinking
We believe that significant improvements can and should be made by applying fresh thinking to the creation and distribution of effective, engaging and more responsible advertising.
So, how?
We are going to collect the best thinking available on the different aspects of advertising, aggregate it all in one place and join the dots.
The ideas can come from advertisers, agencies of any kind, the adtech industry, broadcasters and publishers, the research and data sectors, trade bodies and in effect anyone who is involved in advertising, anywhere in the world — businesses and individuals.
We are especially keen to hear from a broad range of people of any background, especially early-career staff who are practitioners in any aspect of the business and who will build and drive our industry forward.
You can find us at www.advertisingwhocares.org.
Collaborative approach
But that’s not all.
We are also going to actively approach the widest range of groups and individuals on how we can amplify and aggregate the good work that they are already doing.
Entities such as Wacl, the Conscious Advertising Network, Good-Loop, WeAre8, UK Stop Ad Funded Crime, Check My Ads, Ad Net Zero and others are already active and we shall aim to include them in our process and hopefully help raise their voices.
We shall involve the latest thinking from the attention measurement community and academia to showcase the best new ways of making advertising more effective at reaching and influencing its audience.
We will talk to trade associations that have already expressed support for AWC and which offer valuable programmes that will contribute to our body of work. We hope to bring something fresh to them too.
We shall approach other industry players to help highlight the ways they aspire to make advertising and the advertising industry better for everyone.
The building blocks
What will this look like?
We are going to focus on the primary, interlocking building blocks of the industry, building on the work already conducted by our amazing team of supporters and volunteers as presented at our launch, but with additional elements. These are follows:
Business models: We will look at the commercial imperatives driving advertiser, agency, media, adtech, platform and associated parties, and how they influence behaviour throughout the industry. This includes the groundwork from Michael Farmer and his team, and adds in the other inter-connected cogs in the machine.
Creative craft: We will look at the best thinking coming from the creative community, such as Advertising Principles Explained, System1 and others, building on the lead provided by Lucy Jameson of Uncommon Creative Studio and Sir John Hegarty at our launch.
Media planning craft: The paradox within our industry is that the endless combinations of format and channel need a new level of craft in media strategy and planning, especially with so much wastage in supply chains and invalid traffic.
Yet there is a relentless focus on media cost (of what?) and media planning that is distorted by media agency trading models that put agency profits first.
Making the best choices in such a chaotic market is a major art and requires extraordinary skills and resources, especially as media channels become increasingly transactional. It should also be free of the bias that agency profit pressures bring.
Trading, transparency and trust: We will build on the work of Jenny Biggam’s team and aim to establish principles that aspire to improve the way that media is traded and its implications for industry relationships.
Transparency is going in the wrong direction these days and needs to be championed incessantly.
Nick Manning: Who cares wins – the antidote to ‘badvertising’
Measurement, accountability and analytics: We will analyse the best thinking on how advertising should be evaluated in a world of unconnected jigsaw pieces, based on the work begun by Denise Turner’s team.
This in itself is a huge area, spanning many disciplines that are far less connected than they should be.
Technology and data: We will look at the most promising methodologies and techniques for the processing and management of data, including the successors to third-party cookies, such as identity solutions and new tools to suppress ad fraud and improve environmental sustainability.
Wellbeing and recruitment: We need top talent in our industry and we need to give them “employment and enjoyment”, while rewarding them competitively.
The research conducted by Crispin Reed and his team was especially eye-opening at our launch and we will continue to find ways to improve the quality of life for today’s people as well as for future recruits.
Funding high-quality media content and supporting journalism: We know that advertising is crucial to the sustainability of much of the media industry. We need to help pay for high-quality content of all kinds that serves the public’s interests and gives us a better environment for our ads.
We shall build on the great work presented by Ruben Schreurs at our launch on brands and journalism. This is especially important in a world where social media has overtaken fact-based reporting in the power to influence attitudes and behaviour, especially in social policy.
Interconnected ecosystem
Finally, we will aim to show how all of these inter-connected components can and should be reframed to create a better set of partnerships and relationships between advertisers, agencies of many kinds, media companies, platforms, adtech operators, research and data players, and other parts of the eco-sphere.
The danger is that we overreach, but all of these factors are important and interconnected. We believe we can achieve a compendium of the best thinking across the above spectrum if we can solicit the necessary help and if people are generous with their time and ideas.
In just under a year, we aim to present our findings and — fingers crossed — show how advertising and the advertising industry can be improved and add to the value delivered to business and society.
This is no small task, but it feels more necessary than ever right now. Maybe the tide will turn if we help it to. It almost certainly won’t if we don’t try.
Nick Manning is the co-founder of Manning Gottlieb Media (now MG OMD) and was chief strategy officer at Ebiquity for over a decade. He now owns a mentoring business, Encyclomedia, offering strategic advice to companies in the media and advertising industry, and is non-executive chair of Media Marketing Compliance. He writes for The Media Leader each month.