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Emily and Mike talk Google Trial, Other Google Trial, Google Cookies
00:20:10
Host Mike Shields and ad consultant Emily Riley return to break down the major developments in media and advertising, from the Google antitrust trial to the latest on Google's cookie changes.
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- [00:09]
A
Hi, everybody. Welcome to NEXT to Media. I'm Mike Shields. I'm here with my new regular experimental guest, Emily Riley, consultant to the stars. Emily, how you doing?
- [00:17]
B
Hey, Mike, nice to see you again. What's going on?
- [00:20]
A
We will have some things to talk about. I think there's been some things going on with Google. There's a million directions here. I wonder where you want to start. I'm. I find it. Here's what I want to, I think is ironic is they are in the middle of two trials. They've actually been found to be a monopoly company in ad tech. They're in the middle of the search trial and this cookie decision comes out, which is crazy and that it's taken so long and it's fun, but it's crazy to me that their action is going to totally change competition in a market, which is exactly what the feds are trying to stop them from doing in these other pieces. They're so big and so powerful that even when they're being told not to be a monopoly, they can't help but totally impact the competition in another space. And it's the kind of thing that you think the government would be wanting to step in on and they're not or they can't. It's just kind of crazy.
- [01:08]
B
I don't know if they can. It's almost like if roads were ruled Monopoly and we were going to get rid of all roads. It's literally the way that everybody transacts and it's been so long that the tech is pretty fundamental to a lot of different parts of the business. So you want to talk cookies first? I was laughing because it's like another eye roll moment. It's the next nothing burger Google cookie announcement. However, there is this irony that, okay, let's assume they have to sell Chrome cookies, then get into the hands of somebody else.
- [01:40]
A
Yeah, this whole problem, opportunity becomes someone else's, which is. Yeah, I mean, it's funny because you hear so often, well, cookies really don't matter anyway because you can't. It's. They're shrinking and you should be moving away from them, yet no one can stop. It's funny. I feel like this is a victory for people that procrastinate because it's true. How many times did you hear like, everyone should be doing testing and trying new alternatives. And then like no one was. And now they're probably looking, feeling really comp. Really smart.
- [02:10]
B
Well, I mean, cookies play a role, but that doesn't always. They're the best option. They're not super accurate, they're not super stable. So it isn't a bad thing if you spent the last seven years or whatever building up your first party data and building some ID or attaching yourself to some ID that's way more stable. And it also works on other channels like you want to like something on the, on a mobile platform or on CTV to be compatible with what you're doing on digital.
- [02:34]
A
Both seemingly important for the future.
- [02:35]
B
Yeah, is not your friend, you know, so the world has kind of grown up and around third party cookies. You use them because you can. But if you're still completely reliant on third party cookies, you're missing a lot of, you know, understanding your full audience, multi channel measurement, a whole bunch of different things.
- [02:53]
A
It definitely sucks if you spend the last few years building up a cookie list alternative product that was meant to be the future. And now you're. I've seen, I saw somebody on LinkedIn saying they should, everyone should invoice Google for that work, which is kind of funny.
- [03:06]
B
But again, like let's say OpenAI makes good on their word. They said this week that they wanted to buy Chrome. They don't care about cookies, right?
- [03:16]
A
No. Well, they seemingly don't care about advertising. We'll see.
- [03:19]
B
Well, exactly. So you know, they could very easily just shut them off. And so it's not like all of a sudden cookies now are going to be here for the until the end of time. We still have other rulings that could come in, like the trial Google is in right now for search that will have a much more definitive effect on what happens with third party cookies.
- [03:40]
A
Okay, so let's talk, let's talk about the verdict that came down, I guess was the end of the previous week. The remedies have not come out yet, but Google is officially a, an ad tech monopoly in the eyes of the court. And there's all kinds of speculation about whether they're going to have to sell this, that or other get broken up completely. I actually wrote something this week and I'm not the only one saying this. I don't think Google gets really hurt right now and they'll actually be happy to shed some of this stuff. I don't know how much it matters for the future of their business anyway.
- [04:11]
B
Well, it depends on what part of their business you look at. Right. So you know, we were just talking about search. Search makes up, I don't know, seven, eight times more billions of dollars in revenue for them than advertising does. But significant parts of their business are still stitched into their ad server and stitched into their exchange. It's all works as one big ecosystem. So if you're like their long tail local marketing revenue, you use Google Ads, you're that ad server comes into play. So it's hard to know like where their revenue is allocated versus where they actually kind of need that technology or want that technology.
- [04:45]
A
And you almost like won't know until you break it up how it affects everything.
- [04:49]
B
Yeah. What it really does to destabilize. And if that's the other thing is like if you're a small marketer looking at like okay, wait, so then I can't reach my audience anymore on Google, I'm confused now, where do I reach them? Life is kind of hard for you. And it's the same thing on the publisher side. You know, like you can look around right now and see, oh, this is a renaissance moment. This is amazing for publishers. Eventually I think in the near term it's going to be a huge pain in the neck. Like if you've had an ad server that's had a monopoly for this long, you don't have a ton of well resourced competitors to turn to. Right.
- [05:23]
A
Because no one's been bothering to even work compete in that market.
- [05:26]
B
Yeah, like Google, just their, their sheer volume of data, the volume of integrations that they have already available to you, the depth of their reporting. They have all the world's best tech engineers working on this. And so I mean, you know, boohoo hoo. It is a monopoly. But you are saying goodbye to a behemoth that did drive a lot of value. They obviously also completely stifled competition and innovation. So it's like pain before the renaissance is essentially the story that I'm looking at.
- [05:57]
A
So do you think I actually had a publisher on my show last week? We didn't, the verdict hadn't come out yet, so we didn't, we didn't touch on it as much. But he, they, you know, they seem much more concerned with what's happening in my search traffic, the future, what is AI going to do to my business then who's powering my, you know, where, what exchange I'm using, working with or not. That feels like where the government should be stepping in and trying to guide things. And this is like nothing to do with that.
- [06:23]
B
I, you know, it's very complicated. Like can you imagine going first of all you're going to law school and then you're working for the government and now you need to understand like the intricacies of this massive technology and Then.
- [06:35]
A
Try and see the future like your.
- [06:37]
B
Expertise is in something else. And so, you know, the good thing that they've done recently and many of the people that we know and work, have worked with over the last 10 years finally got to be the ones on the stands, finally got to get interviewed during the investigations because then they got like, you know, the people that were actually undergoing like all of the questioning got a chance to explain the entire market in a way that I don't think anybody in the government had any idea about before. Now to your point, Mike, enter AI. We're starting fresh, we're starting all over again. A brand new opportunity to create a monopoly. You know, so a lot of people are saying, oh, ChatGPT now is going to come and OpenAI is going to buy Chrome and that's going to be the new Google. It remains to be seen. Google is still growing. Google has AI. Google's doing better.
- [07:20]
A
They just had a killer quarter. Like they're doing fine.
- [07:23]
B
And I was just looking it up. Depending on how you kind of look at the volume that OpenAI gets. Because prompts can mean anything. Like marketers can use prompts to, you know, read a marketing document. My son uses it to cheat on his tests. Who knows, it's like not exactly search, but like Grok is listed as a bigger AI tool right now.
- [07:42]
A
Yeah. Which is kind of nuts.
- [07:44]
B
Yeah. So they're great at the press but you know, it's not clear to me who's going to be the AI winner anytime soon.
- [07:50]
A
No. And, and I'm still, you know, I know that their, the traffic volume is up and, and I, I still question whether the general public has decided. We are, I'm shifting to I want answer search. Not old fashioned search. Google's a hard habit to break, number one. But it's, it's also, besides like trying to cheat on tests and write things, there's, there's a limited number of, of use cases I think for the average person today.
- [08:17]
B
Well, you know, it's interesting. You know, I love stats. It's in my background. I can't help it. Um, so I was, I'm looking at Gen Z. Right. They search on Google 25% less than gen X.
- [08:28]
A
Okay. That's pretty significant.
- [08:30]
B
One of the first places they go, YouTube.
- [08:33]
A
Yeah.
- [08:36]
B
TikTok, social media and AI. So you do see like these younger generations, they don't give a crap about websites. And Google search was designed to send you to a website. They want answers and they don't care if it's in video format. They're totally cool with that.
- [08:52]
A
I know. It's funny because I find that so inefficient. I'm like, why would you. Yeah, I'm trying to find a restaurant or something. I could see going to TikTok, but I'm like, why do I want to sit through these videos? But they, that's how they, their, their brains are just different. Right. And their habits are just different.
- [09:06]
B
Yeah. You know, so are you going to go explain to a regulator? Look, I know Google search is a monopoly and you want to break it up. YouTube is now being used as a search engine.
- [09:16]
A
Yeah. And really the second biggest search engine, 100%.
- [09:21]
B
You know, the other thing is Amazon. Amazon is now, you look at an e marketer forecast and search any retail search. Amazon is a number one.
- [09:30]
A
Yeah. If you look in the retail media category, they're, they're as dominant as you can be. And they're doing the playbook of, you got to use RDSP and our cloud thing. It's a stack. Is that illegal? Is that, is that down the road? Is that another monopoly? I don't know.
- [09:47]
B
Like, if you're the advertiser, you're looking at it from, where can I put my ad dollars? You don't really care. You're saying, oh, okay, I have these choices. I don't see myself as having one choice. So the advertiser might say, no, this isn't a monopoly for me. I have all the media companies, Amazon included. I have retail media, Amazon included. I have search Amazon included. But in each of those categories, I have all these other choices. But then from our perspective, looking at it from the ad tech world, you start to see Amazon eating everything and taking over just the way Google did.
- [10:16]
A
Yeah. If you're, if you're in our universe, it feels like, oh, my God, the dominance is clear. Yeah, but. And brands don't have this. Well, I, I need to do the right thing for these marketplaces. They're just trying to get through every quarter.
- [10:28]
B
I know we've tried so hard and I do believe in the value of the free press. So obviously you do too, Mike. And you know, advertisers will nod and, like, have that sympathetic smile and then they're like, yeah, but we're going to block news that we don't like.
- [10:43]
A
Yeah, I'm not going to go to bat for that industry because I'm.
- [10:46]
B
Yeah, they have their goals. They don't want to get fired because they were really nice to news. You know, it's sad, but it's the reality. And so then that's where regulation should be managing whether or not these tech companies in the middle are coming up. Like, is there any other industry where the tech companies in the middle are so powerful it's hard to think of one.
- [11:04]
A
No, I, they're the dominant economy in so many ways. Or, and, and there's only going to be so many. Only the big guys are going to be able to compete in these. In this future AI world.
- [11:15]
B
We.
- [11:15]
A
It seems like we. Which is good.
- [11:17]
B
Yeah, well, that's like the, that's like the tech conundrum. The more resources you have, the more resources you have so you can build and build and build and everybody else stays small. Back to what's happening with the ad servers right now. Like who wants to go to a small ad server?
- [11:28]
A
You mentioned ad servers. A little bit lost in the Google noise is the, the Magnite Spring serve thing, which I think which you brought up. It's an interesting one. On the, on the one, on the one hand it's like a small integration seemingly in the ad tech universe, but it is, I don't want to call it monopolistic, but it's a, it's a, it's a. Along the lines of trying to bring pieces together to, to lock in demand and brands. What, what do you make of that? And does it mean anything?
- [11:53]
B
Yeah, I mean it's funny. It, it mirrors what Google is getting in trouble for this week. So Spring Serve is a pretty popular ad server for CTV for advertisers that want streaming.
- [12:04]
A
You know, they're like a Freewheel competitor. Right? It was an upstart that's gotten bigger.
- [12:07]
B
Yeah, they, they, they sold. They were actually part of. It was also yellowhammer. It was like a small independent startup. It's pretty good tech. And I think what Nag Knight has said is we just had a lot of shared customers. A lot of people on the CTV side, streaming side were using this because it was kind of easy to use. It was open and you know, you think about where Magnite plays, they play in the long tail a little bit more. They obviously have top tier partnerships, but when it comes to volume, SpringServe was the server for like the smaller players. And so what they're really doing, you're right. It's like, well, it's just easier to log into one ui. It's easier to be able to port data and have, you know, unified reporting. Fully. True, totally true. They aren't in a situation where they own crazy amounts of traffic and properties like Google did where they then lord over everyone and have control. It does seem like it's streamlining things. I think the more interesting thing is if you look at the DSPs and SSPs out there, how they're going to be shifting over the next couple years, how are they going to try to gain market share? You know, there was actually an article that came out, I think it was in Ad Week. It was like the winners and losers post Google and they're saying SSPs are going to be big winners, publishers are going to lean in.
- [13:21]
A
I actually read the same piece. I was a little bit thrown by that because I felt like, well, yeah, there's, there is going to be a market up, up for grabs. But then you, you, it's been a consolidation wave in recent months. But, but so I, I was thinking there's going to be fewer winners. My initial thoughts were anybody that had these alternative IDs were going to be hurt by this. But that seems to be the opposite of what people are saying. Why SSPs are stronger, perhaps in your mind.
- [13:46]
B
Well, I do think that publishers are strapped for resources on the tech side, so they need a partner to help them build a bridge to the programmatic ecosystem. If Google is no longer part of that, they're going to look for partners. So whether or not SSPs start buying up ad servers or building ad servers or building ad servers into their SSP offering, I wouldn't be shocked to see that more. And then they lock in publishers and.
- [14:12]
A
Totally it's like everything's up for grabs in their mind now with this Google breakup in the offing.
- [14:17]
B
Yeah, for sure. You know, and you look at a company like the trade desk on the buy side, you know, they are essentially just like funneling demand into the universe. And so a publisher wants to get as close to that as possible. If, if an SSP is saying, oh, you know what, I can go around the trade desk like think of Pubmatic. Pubmatic now has Activate. It's half their business is to go direct to the advertiser. It's like you just see all these.
- [14:42]
A
Shifts happening, which is the trade desk was trying to do on the other, on the other side of things.
- [14:45]
B
They're trying to do it in the direction now magnite sort of trying to lock in ctv. So you see all this land grab happening where everybody's trying to shrink the supply chain. Advertisers and publishers want to get closer together, publishers want to pay less for tech, advertisers want more transparency. And I think with Google having to at least in the near term not make any big moves. They'll probably try to, you know, be quiet for a while. It'll be interesting to see what happens to the IDs in particular, as you mentioned, because, you know, again, like, if third party cookies go away with Chrome, they will still be relevant.
- [15:20]
A
Those IDs, especially if they work, like you said in CTV, which is going to be, there is not a cookie.
- [15:26]
B
There to replace platforms. And you know, because advertisers, what they want is they want to reach somebody, they don't care where they are. Never ID does that. Well, advertisers don't care about philosophically whether or not this ID was a good idea or if it's, you know, scalable enough. They, they're looking to let their campaign results decide that, you know, like the money follows the results.
- [15:48]
A
One more question about the trial world of advertising technology and digital advertising. What do you make of the meta case that's going on? It's a ways away from, I think, a decision being made and the issues are very different. But we could argue whether they should or should not have been allowed to buy Instagram and WhatsApp at the time. But now in hindsight, it feels like they really locked up a lot of the market. Do you think there's going to be, what are the potential ramifications or results for our industry? Are they going to get forced to be broken up?
- [16:16]
B
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. They have a ton of money and it's, it's weird. It's like they have launched a thousand million trillion little brands, individual podcasters, everybody that does social media on that site loves that they're a monopoly because it's one place to get an awesome audience. You know, you think of any Insta purchase that you've made. Would that have happened if that little startup company had to spend ads across 36 different social media platforms?
- [16:46]
A
No, it's a, it's a, it's actually an excellent ad vehicle. You don't really, you're hot, you're, you're in that mode where you're actually receptive to those things. They're, you're, you're happy to make a silly purchase, whatever. Yeah, it's really hard to replace.
- [16:58]
B
It's, it's literally a thing now. It's like, oh, that was, they were an Insta brand. Like they literally launched on Instagram and they got big. Like Aviator Nation, perfect example. There are a million others and, you know, I think they're gonna suffer when it gets broken up. But you Know, you look at the, you know, everybody says it's better for the audience in the world at large to, you know, break these things up. TikTok is coming on strong. Younger audiences prefer TikTok 100%. You know, Snap is actually pretty small, but it's big with young people. Really the only place where I see it creating a big problem is with small advertisers. I think that's where the pain is.
- [17:34]
A
Gonna be because the backend data between Facebook, Instagram and everybody else is so powerful. You break that up and you reach.
- [17:41]
B
Your audience so effectively so easily. You get the information you need to improve your campaigns, to target people based on what they're looking at.
- [17:49]
A
They've invested in AI and if that take gets taken away, that's really going to hurt. Or you would think it would dull performance.
- [17:55]
B
Yeah, exactly. So then it's, you know, it's. There's always the give and take. Obviously, philosophically, you don't want a monopoly, but what is the definition of a monopoly in this situation? Like, people have other options. There are other search engines.
- [18:09]
A
Right.
- [18:09]
B
I mean, there are other social media.
- [18:10]
A
There's places, other places for brands to spend money. It's not as though they have to. Yeah.
- [18:14]
B
So it's not as clear cut.
- [18:16]
A
Yeah. And I don't know, you know, that's, that's one where I don't know if what the feds are trying to accomplish there.
- [18:22]
B
Yeah. Like, rule of thumb is 70% market share for a monopoly.
- [18:26]
A
Yeah.
- [18:26]
B
So 70% market share of what? Like, what do you count as social media today? Do you count YouTube? Do you count TikTok outside?
- [18:33]
A
But it's much more entertainment than Friends. It's a really, it's a really hard thing to define. And there are, there are a lot of options out there. All right, what else is, what else is? Watch. Are you watching the industry that we should be thinking about before we wrap?
- [18:44]
B
Oh, that. You know, I think that what I'm looking at right now is the creative renaissance. I think CTV in general has been, you see squeeze back ads, you see pause ads, glass ads, shoppable ads, commerce, all of these things are coming to ctv. And like, the way that people have been talking about it for so long is finally starting to really happen, where instead of one super expensive TV commercial that was made six months ago.
- [19:12]
A
Right.
- [19:12]
B
People are using AI to generate ads in real time.
- [19:15]
A
Right. I just had an announcement about this this week about that stuff.
- [19:19]
B
Exactly. Smaller advertisers are coming to ctv. That creates a lot more competition because they can finally afford to have a commercial. And I think too, the young, like younger generations are now looking at the TV screen as an interactive screen because.
- [19:32]
A
That will be, that's, that would be a pretty dramatic, you know, just what the, what the medium is for and what it's about. Well, if that, if that takes hold, that will really change things and hopefully that gets us past the, you know, what's been the early problem with ctv, which is the same ads a million times and it's irritating. I welcome total interactive, fun, useful ads on my screen.
- [19:52]
B
Yeah. Hopefully we get away from the stalkery kind of weirdness that's been happening just like it used to on the open. Yeah.
- [19:59]
A
All right, That's a hopeful note to end on, Emily. Great stuff. Let's do this again. Thanks for your time.
- [20:03]
B
Absolutely. Thanks, Mike. Have a good one.