• by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, September 5, 2024

Here are some of the issues I am spending time thinking about.

Will antitrust tame Big Tech? Google's run-ins with the U.S. Department of Justice are big deals in our business, even if only being covered anecdotally and superficially by our trade press so far.

As someone who used to do some antitrust law many decades ago when I was a media lawyer, my sense is that while this will take some time to play out, the consequences will be significant.

This is not a repeat of the Microsoft verdict of the late 1990s. There is way too much evidence here.

There is no question that Google (and other Big Tech) did deals with each other, big media and big agencies to dominate the market, protect and grow market share, all while sustaining high pricing and hurting consumers. This will not end well for some key players.

Privacy is back. The protection of consumer privacy is one of those issues that is always “hanging around the hoop” in our business. None of the major players in digital media and advertising are actually aligned with consumers and users on this issue. They increasingly make their billions on capturing and exploiting user data and don't want that to slow down.

However, while they were late to the party, politicians in the U.S. are now very focused on gaining favor with digital consumers and users. Expect to see the digital privacy issue front and center much, much more.

Many who tout transparency are not.

An interesting side show of the Google antitrust cases are the documents that detail so much of the industry's unknown (and sometimes dirty) laundry.

Not only do we -- finally -- have documents detailing how undisclosed rebates work, but we have documentation that reveals that they are paid to prop up agency demand for inferior products -- and that those rebates are not only not shared with clients, but that the governing documents forbid their disclosure.

Anyone who says that these rebates operate like agency commissions of old is full of it. Net. Net. Dominant sellers of media pay large buyers to keep buying their stuff, at inflated prices, so that they can kick some of the money back to them and artificially maintain market share. (See antitrust topic above if you want to know where this one ends up.)

AI levels the playing field between agencies and “JAG's - just a gal; just a guy.”

I hate to use the term AI in a column these days, since it is so overused. However, among the many things that generative AI can do very well right now is help one smart and talented person generate the quantity and quality of a dozen working the old-fashioned way.

Classic agencies and marketing services companies better watch out. Your former employees are building JAG agencies -- “just a gal; just a guy” -- and taking over projects and accounts, one by one by one. This is a phenomenon that will explode over the next year.

What issues are top of mind for you this September?