Are Facebook and Google really going to nuke their own businesses?

Is this digital advertising's Endgame? Or just a game?

As summer nears its end, I find myself wondering, is the biggest story in advertising being under-told? Or is it just a story?

What I mean is this:

• Facebook says it plans to totally change how it targets users - and that at some point soon, it won’t actually know who people are when it delivers them ads

• Facebook swears Apple’s targeting restrictions are going to hurt its business, and there is already some evidence of that (boffo earning aside)

  Google is building a seemingly far less precise form of targeting centered around cohorts (a word I had never said before 2021) rather than individuals. And according to Kate Kaye at Digiday, Google may even ditch cohorts and shift to using ‘topics’ to target people (which sounds very 1995)

  The FTC revamped its case and is coming after FB for antitrust stuff

  The DOJ is coming for Google, along with roughly 95 other state Attorney Generals

• InfoSum, a company few of us had heard of just a few years ago, just raised $65 million and is now valued at $300 million, according to the Wall Street Journal (I’ll explain why I’m including this in a moment)

  

  This all leads me to many questions. Such as:

  Do we really think that Facebook and Google are going to voluntarily make their ad businesses - arguably the most powerful money-printing machines the world has ever seen - less effective? On purpose?

  No, like seriously, if Facebook does its version of cohorts and Google does whatever it does (which is mostly about the open web, to be sure), are ad campaigns not going to work as well? Will they stop converting? Be less attributable?

  Or will they work just fine, and we just won’t understand how (sort of like now, but worse). I’m going to assume that ad buyers will see different buying options in these company’s interfaces and fewer ways to target specific audiences. But truly, how will advertisers actually know what targeting changes are and aren’t taking place behind the scenes, and if they are really privacy-friendly? They’ll only know if campaigns deliver leads, sales or whatever, right?

  As it stands now, Facebook and Google don’t even allow verification companies and the like to put code or tags on their sites/apps. Why would visibility get any better in the cohort era? Will regulators even be able to really tell?

  

  Are they really going to nuke their revenue streams - because they have to?

  Which brings me to this new, seemingly scary-to-tech FTC. They have formulated a new argument that talks about the power of the network effect, and how it makes things less competitive for advertisers. That seems - sound (but what do I know). I find myself assuming - the Feds aren’t going to take this case on unless they’ve really got the goods - right? Same with the DOJ and Google - surely they’ve got smoking guns all over the place - otherwise they wouldn’t go to all this trouble -right?

  Or is this sort of like the never-ending quest to nail Trump, during which I’ve convinced myself numerous times that he’s definitely about to go to jail, and now they’re sitting around hoping his butler/CFO flips on him or faces like 6 months in jail or something.

  What actually happens if these investigations culminate? Do Facebook and Google get the regulators off their backs with these new cohort song and dances? Or do we finally see major ramifications?

  For example- what if FB really had to spin off Instagram, and disconnect its ad system from the mother ship. Would Instagram ads -which are eerily effective and welcome - now suck? Would FB’s even feel it?

  What if Google really had to sell DoubleClick or YouTube? Search ads would seem to be fine. But would their profiles of users across multiple properties be shattered? Seriously, how would we know that they are actually disentangling all these connections unless the Feds put engineers inside the company (like inspectors looking for WMDs in Iraq).

  

  Which brings me to the InfoSum news. The company, led by former Xaxis and GroupM top executive Brian Lesser, is all about data never going anywhere. Forget walled gardens. In the InfoSum universe, companies hoard their first-party info on consumers and use InfoSum’s tech to create clean copies that can inform targeting but should never compromise user privacy, or any individual company’s advantages.

  I’m not saying that VC investment always tells us which way the wind is blowing, but this feels like a pretty powerful statement. The InfoSum way is so diametrically opposed to the way that one-to-one marketing has worked, if they’re right it’s a massive statement.

  Is digital ad targeting as we know it really about to implode? Is the duopoly really in trouble? Are we in the Endgame now Tony?

  Why aren’t we freaking out about this more?

  Or is this all an illusion?