The Exposure Era of Big Tech — Surveillance, Complexity, Fraud, and Disastrous Unintended Consequences
It was the Exposure Era of the “Big Tech Mega-Monopoly Middlemen” (BTM3) that siphoned off the power and influence of marketers and consumers worldwide by renting marketers “access” to their customers — and virtually every marketer jumped on the “big data, big tracking cookies, interruption-based exposures” bandwagon. The thousands of AdTech middlemen (graphic above) in the digital marketing food chain that all fed into the BTM3s, demonstrates how marketers put their money in one end and whatever results came out the other — after everyone gets their “cut.” And the balance of power in marketing shifted…(AI answers & comments)
Surveillance-based Tracking (SBT) — after 20+ years, online marketing became a $500+ billion industry of “surveillance capitalism,” — accused of monetizing lying, cheating, stealing, manipulation, and fraud on a global scale. SBT is surveillance-based ad tech, behavioral manipulation, and filter bubbles that were intended to improve online advertising — not generate billions for organized crime.
While providing the benefits of convenient (supposedly) “free” services (search, social, and selling) SBT extracted significant indirect “costs” from consumers, marketers, and society at large in the form of:
Invasive Surveillance
Reduced Personal Privacy
Exploitation w/o Permission
Destructive/Extractive/Fraudulent AdTech Supply Chains
Exploitive Opaque Mega-Monopolies
Value of Personal Data Goes to Third Parties
Increased Supply-Side Manipulation
Increased Information Asymmetry
Narrowing Choices w/Algorithmic “Echo Chambers”
Increased Cyber Insecurity (data breaches, hacking, ID theft, etc.)
Disastrous Unintended Consequences
Pending/Increasing Worldwide Regulation
All the companies in the top image are middlemen members of supply chains that feed mainly into several BTM3s that take the lion’s share of all global online ad revenues. And despite knowing exactly how divisive the effects of what they were doing would be on consumers and society — nothing stood in the way of revenue or growth.
SBT is exactly what it says — “surveillance-based tracking” where companies spy on everyone, everywhere, and everything, all the time — without permission, disclosure, or recourse. Everything you do online, everything you buy, everywhere you go, and everyone you talk to or about, is collected to target millions of moving targets and manipulating them into doing something they otherwise would not do. SBT’s stated goal is to eliminate “uncertainty” (another word for “choice”).
It sounded logical enough, and marketers bought into the BTM3 that unleashed SBT on the world. 21st-century big tech + 21st-century big data = more “right person, right message, right time — at the cheapest cost” — and everyone in the chart was getting their “cut” of the new “shiny objects.” (Principle-agent problem.) However, the process always remained opaque, its claimed efficacy in question, and it produced some truly disastrous unintended consequences. Some believed SBT could cause the destruction of consumer choice, privacy, democracy, and free markets. “We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads,” with levels of complexity and fraud that mirrored the 2008 subprime mortgage bubble.
Marketers and consumers were never told specifically how the “big data algorithms” would be designed or used, nor could anyone have foreseen the magnitude of the unintended consequences of so much data in so few unaccountable hands. “Surveillance Capitalism” had become the default, if not sole, internet business model. Even while experts continued to sound the alarm, the marketers (the old “Kings”), surrendered ever more consumer influence to the mega-monopolies (the new “Kings”) they funded.
These BTM3 are now producing “smart connected devices” (that cannot be blocked) that observe and report on consumers 24/7/365. Consumers will be surrounded by these “smart-everything devices” (including VAPAs — voice-activated personal assistants — Alexa, Siri, Cortana, Google, etc.), home security systems, children’s toys, smart watches, cell phones, and many more all designed to collect personal information, package that personal information and rent it to anyone who wants it. All without consumer knowledge, permission, control, or recourse. For marketers, VAPAs are particularly worrisome, potentially cutting brands out of the loop as the VAPAs select what to buy.
SBT is unstable because it’s an inefficient extractive model monetizing lying, cheating, stealing, and manipulation of consumers — at the “point-of-interruption” (POI). The success of this model depends on no one finding out the real costs, and there is mounting evidence that SBT never worked nearly as well as claimed.
SBT marketing is not consumer, marketer, or free-market aligned. By design, SBT is extractive, manipulative, and dependent upon consumers being unaware. Include the unintended consequences and there is little upside. Many tech experts, scholars, consumers, governments, and economists believe (The Social Dilemma) that SBT presents an existential threat to democracy, free markets, and human rights. And governments are beginning to agree by seeking to regulate SBT and the associated practices. An article in the Wall Street Journal about the state of online marketing in the 21st century and one expert’s view of online marketing.
As ever more government regulation and actions against the “BTM3s” increase, marketers and consumers need something better — before it’s too late. (“So once again we see a historic opportunity for an alliance of companies to found an alternative ecosystem — one that returns us to the earlier promise of the digital age as an era of empowerment and the democratization of knowledge.”)
What’s About to Happen — The “Perfect Storm”
A “Perfect Storm” is brewing of AI, the demise of third-party tracking cookies, and increasing government regulation of BTM3s worldwide — none of which is good for marketers. Taking each point in order — marketers cannot afford a “seat at the AI table” — which will be occupied by the same BTM3s that marketers and consumers financed in the last go-round; the true impact of the “crumbling” of third-party tracking cookies is unknown at this time, but it certainly won’t benefit marketers; and the increasing anti-trust and privacy actions against BTM3 by governments worldwide will only add to the uncertainty. The BTM3s will always do what is in their best interest — because that’s what monopolies do — but this time, with AI, marketers, and consumers could both end up being eliminated from the choosing and buying process altogether because the BTM3 w/AI powered-PAs (personal assistants) could do all the choosing.
The Only Chance — The Original Stakeholders (Marketers and Consumers) Must Take Back Their Power
After all the years of “surveillance-based tracking exposures by the ton” from the BTM3, marketers, and consumers can take back their power with the most powerful marketing network platform in history based on “credibility” instead of “exposures” and controlled by marketers and consumers together, for their mutual benefit instead of another BTM3. A simple “credibility algorithm” gives consumers and marketers what they both want. Consumers get the truthful marketing information they want, and marketers receive the direct, intentional consumer connection with that truthful marketing information that marketers want. A “credibility algorithm” automatically maximizes marketers’ credibility and multiplies marketing “voice and tone” to amplify all (past, present, and future) marketing exposures, unlocking increased returns from all previous exposures and creating a consumer “point-of-need” (PON) marketing platform — where marketing is the message and the media, not the interruption. A “marketing Wikipedia.”
A simple “credibility algorithm” that automatically and continuously maximizes a marketer’s credibility and creates a “marketing Wikipedia,” is the only thing that makes everything a marketer has done or will do — better. Marketers gain back the power and control that they surrendered to the BTM3 over the past two decades and establish a powerful and permanent defense against all future “network effects” and any AI-driven processes that attempt to reduce marketer power and influence. And the only risk is doing nothing.