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- [00:00]
Alan Chappelle
This podcast is brought to you by Freewheel. Freewheel gives advertisers direct connections to streaming video inventory from the world's leading publishers. It's simple, really. They're removing middlemen, which means more working media dollars, better outcomes, and enhanced control. Discover how it pays to go direct. Visit freewheel.com marquitecture that's freewheel.com marquiquure welcome to the Monopoly Report. The Monopoly Report is dedicated to chronicling and analyzing the impact of antitrust and other regulations on the global advertising economy. If you are new to the Monopoly Report, you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter@monopoly-report.com and you can check out all of the Monopoly report podcasts@monopolyreportpod.com I'm Alan Chappelle. This week my guest is Marty Swandt. Marty is a journalist covering the ad space. Most recently, he was senior reporter at Digiday, covering marketing and technology. Previously, Marty was a staff writer and marketing editor at Forbes. Other past roles include covering marketing and tech at adweek and reporting on Alabama politics for the Associated Press. I'm looking forward to chatting with Marty about how he views the role of an ad industry trade journalist and specifically, his approach to uncovering the truth in a complicated market that has no shortage of people who are experts in spin. But Marty also has a unique position within the industry and is able to see how things really work here in the ad space. Finally, I'm hoping to pick Marty's brain about what he thinks some of the emerging stories in this space are. So let's get to it. Hey, Marty, thanks for coming on the pod. How are you?
- [01:54]
Marty Swandt
Thanks for having me. I'm doing it right here and no longer raining New York City. It's been a dreary few days.
- [01:59]
Alan Chappelle
Yeah, but it's beautiful right now. This is my favorite time in the city.
- [02:03]
Marty Swandt
I'll take the heat any day.
- [02:04]
Alan Chappelle
Yeah, absolutely. So most of my audience probably knows who you are from your days as an ad industry journalist for Adweek and Digiday, but your experience as a journalist extends far beyond the ad industry trades. And so where did you get your start and how does that experience impact your work today?
- [02:23]
Marty Swandt
Yeah, it's a good question. So long before I started covering the, you know, the ad tech, AI digital media space, I actually started off in newspapers. And so after a brief internship here in, you know, in New York, right out of school, you know, at S and P, I was or I was doing a lot of corporate credit ratings. I actually moved down to Alabama and I was in the Birmingham News for. It was supposed to be a year, long story short, been done for like four years. Really grounded myself in kind of old school journalism and being in a newsroom with a lot of people that were covering city council, covering, know, the State House and all these things. And long story short, my last stop down there was with the AP covering the State House and covering politics and legislation and. But what a lot of people don't know because it's, I forget it sometimes is my first interest in covering really the intersection of policy and business was actually in 2008 when I had an internship at Reuters in Brussels. So right when the financial crisis was hitting and to dive into that. And I really understand the role of policy in business.
- [03:13]
Alan Chappelle
So I take it you're not originally from Alabama. So what, what drew you down there?
- [03:18]
Marty Swandt
Yeah, good question. I grew up in Minnesota, actually. And so when I, when I went to journalism school at Mizzou, I actually thought Missouri was the South. You come from Minnesota. So I had to go a couple more states down. Yeah. So, yeah. So what drew me down there? I was looking at, you know, right now I was looking at jobs everywhere. I was looking at, you know, New York and D.C. and, and I was looking at things in Jakarta and in other spots and all over the world because I want to be a foreign correspondent. But then, you know, wanted to do more writing and reporting and I found this opening for a fellowship in Birmingham. It's a year long gig and I thought, you know, I'm curious. With the South, I've never been down there. I'll go for a year and work at a newspaper that was really well respected. And since I've left, they've won a few Pulitzers actually, my old friends and colleagues down there. So it's, I'll go for a year. That year became two years, three years, four years.
- [04:03]
Alan Chappelle
I mean, I personally found like the, some of the smartest decisions I've ever made have involved sort of getting out of where you are in the comfort zone that you happen to be in. And just for the record, I was getting much closer to a Minnesota vibe from you than an Alabama vibe. But how cool to experience something that's, that's got to be very different.
- [04:22]
Marty Swandt
Yeah, no, it's so true. And I've, I've noticed that my, my accent tends to kind of morph wherever I am. So I was again, I never faked. But like, I was down there long enough to where native Alabamians thought I was from there. And like my wife's from Memphis. And so like whenever we go to visit her family, Tennessee, my accent still kicks on when I. When I go back down.
- [04:39]
Alan Chappelle
Fantastic. I'm heading down to Memphis in September for a week and I'm looking forward to it.
- [04:43]
Marty Swandt
It's a fun city.
- [04:45]
Alan Chappelle
I will. I'm. As a musician that's just like that. That poll place is kind of Mecca for me.
- [04:49]
Marty Swandt
Yeah, that's awesome.
- [04:51]
Alan Chappelle
So as a journalist covering the ad space, what do you see as your primary role is like there a distinction to be drawn as between reporting the news of the day and analyzing its impact. Because there's certainly a component within the trade press where it seems like they're expected to maybe regurgitate press releases. And so like how do you dig for a story, particularly when, when you know that might be under pressure to push a particular narrative.
- [05:18]
Marty Swandt
Every outlet's going to be different, right. They're going to have their different lens on the news and different style how they report things. So I'll answer a couple just from my own perspective, from the places I've been to, whatnot. I would say like, thankfully I've never like the two or three ways of thinking about this. I guess on the one hand I always look at this as my job, especially let's take Digit, for example, where I was most recently. There I'm writing for an audience that is already familiar with the topic and they're already inside the weeds somewhat. So I saw my job there is to help them understand the weeds more and to understand the space that they already are familiar with, like what's new to them and also how do I distill things or explain things in a way that maybe they hadn't noticed, whether it's reporting news and explaining whether it's, let's say like a product update or news update or an antitrust update and like giving enough context for people to be informed whether it's for their job or something that they're interested in. But at Forbes, where I was before, Digiday was kind of the reverse of that, where I was explaining marketing and tech and a lot of ad tech, IPOs and M& A and stuff like that over those three years for a broader business audience. So back then it was like it was how do I write about these things that people don't necessarily think about every day, but they still have implications? So that's always been the through thread of my work is like, I want to write about things that help people understand the context if you're already in the industry, but also to know the context, if you're outside of it, so you can see how it impacts your life. Because as you've seen the last decade ad tech, when I first started covering it a decade ago, I was like, am I going to get bored of covering ad tech and going from covering politics? And this is again 2015 pre Cambridge Analytica. And I learned a lot on the fly and I became more and more fascinated by the space and the complexities and very quickly realized there's a lot here that is important to the average person around due to privacy and whatnot and competition. And it just. There are so many threads, as you know, in the ad tech digital media space that people don't realize are relevant to their lives. So I'm always trying to think of like, why a certain story is relevant to any given audience.
- [07:09]
Alan Chappelle
Do you struggle at times with, with maybe pushing back on, you know, say some big entity saying, look, this is what we think and this is what you'd like to report on, where implicitly, at least, access to that big entity may be conditioned on you seeing the world the same way.
- [07:25]
Marty Swandt
I've, I mean, I've felt that sometimes from certain places where they, they might say, well, this isn't a story here, this is the real story. But I've always felt like it's not my job to listen to them. It's my job to listen to the experts in a space and you know, and always, always write things fairly and talk to, let's say, like, let's say like some of the tech giants, like get their side of things and ask them for comment, but also going under the hood and talking to people that are, maybe used to be at a company or, or that are very familiar with the space, talking to competitors, because it's like if they want to have their narrative out there, there's. They can write a blog on their own blog site or whatever else. And they do a press release. Yeah, and they do. But I'm shocked, honestly, I'm shocked how often a lot of journalists don't necessarily even double check. So, like, there's a couple examples from the Google Ad Teachers case where there's certain things that they would say that nobody checked to see, like if that was actually true. Like, you know, there are certain things that maybe came up, you know, in, in blog posts or in briefings, like background briefings. And like, this doesn't quite seem right or like, I'm gonna go check with other people on this. And I think sometimes people are under pressure for maybe a quick timeline or you know, deadline. But it's like that's our job as journalists to actually do due diligence and figure out, like, is what someone's saying true or not? And yeah, I've never felt like even in the trade process, like, I don't feel like it's my job to do that. Like, I feel like a lot of companies think that the trade press has just meant that there to be their friend or to be their, their sound, you know, kind of their, their megaphone. But I think honestly, trade press have really important role where we are the ones closest to these topics in the way that people are just jumping into, you know, kind of like a classic, you know, in political coverage, you have someone that hops into a diner and somewhere where they've never been and talks to a few people. It's like a lot of mainstream outlets, some sometimes do that with the ad tech space. Some people cover it really well. But trade press, they're close to the topic and they can feel the pulse in a way that a lot of people can't. If you're not, you know, following its new nuances day in and day out.
- [09:09]
Alan Chappelle
Yeah. And it's, it's challenging because it is sort of complicated and at times convoluted. And there are things that I think a lot of people take for granted based on decisions or milestones that may have occurred five, 10, even 20 years ago. And everybody just sort of, oh, well, that's just the way it's always been. And so if you're not, you know, steeped in this, it's really difficult to dig through that, I would imagine.
- [09:33]
Marty Swandt
Yeah, it's so true. And that's one of the interesting things I've kind of accidentally felt when I was covering ad tech initially. So I got the Birmingham News, I covered economic legislation. So looking at bills for tax incentives for car plants like Mercedes and stuff like that, and other tax incentives for. But really complex bills that seem like they were really boring and didn't play a role. But that's implications for where tax dollars are going, for example. So I've always loved taking really complex things and looking for ways to describe it in comprehensible ways. And so I, you know, first it was tax policy and economic legislation. Then from there it was very. It helped me understand the ad tech space, also very complex. And how do I also unwind that, you know, and help people understand that space too?
- [10:17]
Alan Chappelle
So. All right, just a liberal arts major in college, actually.
- [10:20]
Marty Swandt
Journalism. Yeah, Journalism. Yeah. But it was the pure journalism degree. Yeah, it's it's yeah. So liberal arts through and through. But there are days where honestly you wish I love my training down there. But there are days I wish I'd spent more time getting training in more whether it's engineering or whatever. Like something that I could also apply in the same. Like computer science for example.
- [10:40]
Alan Chappelle
Yeah. It's funny now cause you see like kids coming outta school who have like 40 times the tech background that I do and they were also history majors. And so it's, it's a little bit challenging to, to, to, to work through that. And I fortunately for, for what served me well is I, I feel kind of a. My cousin Vinnie sense where I can kind of tell when someone's BSing me and I, I have enough friends in the industry where I can ask questions and say hey, does this quite add up for you? And that's been really helpful and I imagine for you it's sort of a similar thing.
- [11:14]
Marty Swandt
Exactly. Yeah. And I feel like sometimes like you have a spidey sense of something feels off here and other times just from doing so many interviews you just realize, you just tell when someone's being honest or not sometimes, not always. But that's what, that's where the, there's an old journalism phrase of if your mother says she loves you, go ahead and check out and double check it. And it's. Yeah. So it's like I love that because it's so true in terms of like the spaces that we cover. It's. You can't just trust some because everyone has some sort of agenda.
- [11:42]
Alan Chappelle
So I want to shift a little bit and leverage your industry analyst brain a bit. So what do you see as some of the biggest tactical challenges impacting digital media today? And why?
- [11:53]
Marty Swandt
So in the context of digital media and just in terms of like how we cover the space and whatnot, I think it's there, there are a few challenges I think there. On the one hand, I think it's format because I think a lot of the stories today don't necessarily work in a classic 800 word format or whatever else. And, and it should be a lot more modular. I'm thinking even, you know, when I was either down covering the Google antitrust trial in the first week or covering it remotely. Since then there's so many little nuggets in there that were newsworthy, that weren't necessarily worth the whole story but, but would have been great on their own. As a little piece of something. I could, I could tweak that out somewhere, but that's just you know, as we all know, Twitter is kind of deprecating these days. So it's like. But it's not necessarily going to be enough for a whole story. So I feel like news in general and the pace of things, whether it's regulatory stuff or AI updates or anything, you know, privacy, legislation, there's so many topics right now that weren't coverage, but they don't fit into the traditional formats. So I think that's one thing that's a challenge. I think timing. There's just a lot at the same time that's happening. And I also think just like in every place is their own publishing cycle too. So like for me, covering very busy beats like AI, antitrust, ad tech, all these fun things at digit, we would only publish at midnight. And that's just a style that predates me. But there are often days where I was just chopping at the bit to cover something in the moment, but it had to wait. And so it's tricky when there's a lot more to cover than fits into any given place's process.
- [13:12]
Alan Chappelle
So it's funny, I take what you're saying. It makes a lot of sense to me. Regarding smaller pieces, I actually sometimes find myself in the. Having the opposite problem, particularly as you get into regulatory stuff. I've written over the years for a whole bunch of the trade pubs, and the 800 word minute is sort of a recipe for what I call mixed privacy, where it just, you've now you kind of dumbed it down to the point where I'm not sure that it has any meaning. And so as I'm writing a Monopoly report piece, those average, you know, a short one is 1200 and I'm regularly at 1500 and maybe that's too long winded. And, and, and God bless Arie for allowing me that room to, to put stuff out there, because I find that a lot of these, you know, there's so many nuances in there, and even at 1500 words, you sometimes are leaving stuff out. And so I don't know if you find yourself in that kind of challenge.
- [14:02]
Marty Swandt
Oh, 100%. You know, I mentioned, you know, the, the relevance of having shorter options, but I totally hear you. Like, that's the other thing. I don't want to have too long of an answer, but that's the thing I think about all the time is these topics are so complex, they deserve. You mentioned 1200 words. Honestly, there are some things that could easily be 2000, but if I ever go above like 1500, that's what I'm like, Martin, you know, editors usually say, Martin, you got to cut this back a bit. But yeah, you're right, because I feel like whether it's, I like the privacy way of thinking about it because, like, whether it's with that or a lot of the academic research things, there's a lot in there that is interesting. I love reading research papers, for example, but the academic audience is going to read up 20, 30 page thing. But there's a risk when you just try to fit that into a small piece. You're overly diluting something where you lose its essence. And yeah, I totally agree. It's like, it's, it's tricky when there's a lot more than fits into something. How do you actually capture, you know, how do you distill something without losing its, its nuance?
- [14:55]
Alan Chappelle
Yeah. And, you know, thank God for really good editors too because, like, I think I've left to my own devices. I might, you know, I might be way too long. And so the balance is just really hard to find. And, and, and you guys are doing this, you know, several times a week where, you know, I'm just kind of doing it, you know, once a week at best. And so it's a whole different thing.
- [15:14]
Marty Swandt
Yeah.
- [15:15]
Alan Chappelle
So, okay, so we've talked about tactical challenges. I want to shift a little bit and, and I'd love your thoughts on some of the, the philosophical challenges in the ad tech space. So really more broad and, and really more like, you know, what's really preventing this space from reaching the level of maturity that everybody is sort of, you know, hoping it reaches.
- [15:34]
Marty Swandt
Yeah, it's a good question and I'm sure this is just, again, my, my one opinion as an outsider versus people that are maybe in the weeds of that understand a lot of the, I think in some, this kind of gets to my answer some. It's, there's a lot of gravitational pull in different directions. Right. As we've seen with, you know, the platforms and, and how much they dominate just in terms of size and influence and, and, and just scale. It's. Oh, I know everyone talks, but that's, that's not an obvious, or that's a, it's a very obvious answer there. But it seems like I, I've been thinking about this, this, this phrase in the context of, you know, kind of the ongoing debate around like, you know, agency's role in, you know, kind of generative AI, for example, you know, versus tech companies. But I keep feeling like, I remember like a decade ago, again, we're right, we're recording this when, when Con is happening right now and con line's 2025. And when I was looking back over some old pieces from back then, I found one from 2015. And it was back when they were talking about a lot of the world tech companies back then and platforms like Facebook pre meta, back in the old Facebook days, you know, we're having more of a splash and you had all the ad tech yachts that were popping up. And there's a, there's a quote in one of the pieces that really this tech exec was talking about. There's always a place for agencies, you know, even if tech companies are more at the table. And I felt like reading that felt just as relevant today as it did a decade ago. And I keep thinking like, does the industry just. Is it like this? Like, my French is not very good, like the fait accompli of things. Right. It's like everyone just feels like it's already happened. You know, there's no use fighting it. The battle's already been won. But we saw that with ad tech, you know, in terms of a lot of the giants and kind of the role in the space. And we see that with AI too, with the platforms. And what does it look like? I keep asking people questions over the last couple years even, and people haven't had an answer to what does this mean for the industry? Like, I think there is this feeling like the scale and the fuel, I mean, which comes from the money and the ad dollars, like, is too much one direction. It's really hard to turn something that's already going downhill. That's one thing. I think the other thing is complexities like you mentioned around whether it's the public discourse of things or. I know that a lot of the ad tech lobby groups have used that to push against state bills, for example, or national bills. Hey, it's too complex. It's hard to, you know, hard to regulate. Don't worry about it. Or, or like, we know what, we know what's in the best interest of the industry. Let us draft the laws. And as we've seen, that's often a tactic to get people to write things that are favorable for the industry. Yes. I think the complexities have been used as, as a smokescreen in a lot of ways for actually fixing things.
- [18:05]
Alan Chappelle
Well, and it's great that you brought that up. That actually came up in my, my discussion with Jonathan Cancer. Like, on the one hand, as somebody who's been in this industry for over 20 years, like you, you kind of want to have relatively low privacy rules like you. I can see how that's attractive. Like, because there's operational costs to doing that and there's usually revenue considerations to doing that. And so, like, I get that mindset, but over the last 15 or 20 years, that mindset has actually not been helpful to the industry because that has sort of allowed big tech, that has been one of the drivers of big tech's growth. And arguably, had we had more strict rules, and arguably had we had a rule set that takes into account the size and the scope of data that's being processed, we might be in a much better position than we're in now.
- [18:54]
Marty Swandt
Yeah, I think so too. And it's interesting, before going down to the trial last fall, summer, September last year, I can't believe it's almost a year ago. I was reading. I think it's Tim wu's book, right? It is, yeah. Yeah. Like Columbia professor. Yeah. But I was reading his book on antitrust and it was interesting because again, like, I hadn't covered this space really, you know, the antitrust side of things before then. So I was trying to do a, a quick deep dive to kind of catch up with a lot of the history of things whatnot. And, and one of the things that stood out, and you probably already know this, but maybe, I don't know, maybe some readers don't. But, you know, it's. In some ways it's history is repeating itself. Looking at even the railroads, for example. And back then, you know, he put together this interesting thread of when things aren't regulated, it tends, we obviously at least monopolies. But he also talked about how it ends up leading to economic disparities, ends up leading to political issues, and made this interesting kind of correlation between, you know, 1930s, 40s, whatever it was. Hey, the point is we see this happen time and time again where when things aren't regulated and dealt with responsibly, there are other repercussions into economic disparity, into political problems that we're also seeing now, I think, with the platforms, whether it's with misinformation or anything else.
- [20:01]
Alan Chappelle
So I really loved Tim's book. For me, what came across as maybe the central thesis was that there was a time where we viewed too much concentrated power as being bad for democracy and even bad for capitalism. And then Something happened in 1980 and we kind of forgot about that. And so we've sort of returned to that where the, the idea now. And, and, and it's, it's really interesting because it's not necessarily just a con. A, a liberal view the conservative movement has fully embraced in part because of the deep platforming issues and because there, there's sort of a fear of bias for many of these tech giants who, by the way, the General consensus in 2008 was that group was very pro Obama. And I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing. I'm just saying that that's what it was. And so what Tim Wu, I think, did a really effective job of crystallizing was the idea that, like, you know, the problem is power. And when you have too much power concentrated in one place, there are all kinds of negative repercussions. There's sort of an analogous thing in privacy circles where a guy named Daniel Solov, who's a GW professor, has sort of been, you know, beating his chest about the. The idea that privacy is power. And you're seeing that manifest itself. So I know that was a bit of a filibuster and I'm not even sure what the question is other than I think we're agreeing.
- [21:26]
Marty Swandt
Yeah, I think we for sure are. Yeah. It's.
- [21:28]
Alan Chappelle
It's funny.
- [21:28]
Marty Swandt
It's. It's interesting too. Even thinking back to like when the Sherman act was first passed, it was, it was like 1890, you know, thinking back to the, the robber barons back then and whatnot, and thinking of kind of the, the kind of the similarities now. I was thinking a while ago, like, like who, like which, like which current tech exec would be considered each of those back then.
- [21:47]
Alan Chappelle
There's an archetype, isn't it? It's really funny how like 100 something years later.
- [21:51]
Marty Swandt
Yeah, exactly.
- [21:54]
Alan Chappelle
What are some of the biggest, you know, stories or issues that you're thinking about right now? You know, maybe you cover them, maybe you don't. But, like, what do you think right now is really hot.
- [22:03]
Marty Swandt
I'm. I guess, you know what I'm thinking about kind of collectively as an observer looking at any given space versus, like how I'd cover when I'm at a certain publication, whether it's at Dig, Forbes or Adweek, you know, I'm always thinking of what are the big stories that are relevant to this audiences. But now as a free agent writing for a lot of different places, you know, I'm thinking about it a little differently what I'm. What I'm following or what I want to cover because it might be for people that are in the weeds and it might be for more of a mainstream audience and so more in the weeds. I think as much ink as there was on the, on the trials, I think there wasn't enough and even going to the remedies phase, you know, and stuff like that for those. And I think that the Meta trial, you know, the antitrust trial, the FTC was vastly undercovered by the trade press. And so I feel like there's a lot that was there that people either didn't have time for ignored or didn't feel like it was relevant. Because I think people often see these cases as well, they're not going to have an implication until there's an outcome, until there's remedies. But no, we saw almost every single day there, there are revelations in whether it's in court or in filings. There are certain things in the cases that were just because it happened in the court of law, you know, and there was this, there's this legal obligation for the truth. And there are a lot of things that came out in evidence that people often said, Marty, like we had a theory this was happening, like ad tech, you know, companies, for example, people that worked at a certain companies. It's like we had a theory XYZ was happening, but we didn't know until you wrote about it in this piece, you know, mentioned something or at the time maybe Google would say no, this isn't happening, or we couldn't prove something. But then when it's in evidence, it was really validating and very in some ways cathartic I think for people in the industry that had speculated on things for a long time to finally come out. So I think that's something that I think is still a big story. I think the copyright cases on the AI side of things is a huge story right now. And another example of it's interesting even seeing publishers, you know, take one or two approaches with those. It's you've got some that are suing OpenAI and Perplexity and Google and Microsoft and you have others that are making deals. And I remember writing a piece a few years ago, I think it was like probably 2022, 2023, saying like will publishers end up making the same mistake with AI as it did with Web2 when it's short term gains for ad revenue back then or like switching mediums when, you know, when video is, you know, initially a hot topic back then, but short term gains and then long term losses. And I keep wondering will that happen again with AI? And we're already seeing that because I keep wondering will these deals publishers are making, will it end up Diluting the value of the lawsuits. I'm not a legal expert, so I don't really know like what kind of, you know, feel free to weigh in if you have any thoughts on that. But I think that could be a part of, you know, the tech companies defense as well. Everyone else is making deals so like these other people shouldn't have a problem. But it's impressive to see how many publishers have filed lawsuits either individually or collectively.
- [24:51]
Alan Chappelle
Yeah. So it's really interesting that you hit on I think three really important ones because the Google search trial, the Facebook or the Meta FTC trial and the various copyright issues around the world are the three biggest issues and most important issues I think impacting digital media over the long term. Nonetheless, people are sleeping on them. I would go as far as to say is that the outcome of the search trial will be more important than to the ad tech community and the publisher community than the outcome of the ad tech trial. Because from my perspective, if you don't divest Chrome as part of this, you might as well, you might as well just mark in your calendar you're going to be back in antitrust court in two or three years. And like, maybe we can be happy that like, you know, Jonathan Cancer loosened the pickle jar as it comes to like antitrust enforcement, but it's really not a good outcome. I think people are sleeping on the likelihood of meta actually losing in this case. I don't think I'm. Look, I'm not saying they're going to lose, but I'm saying it's, there's probably a 25 chance that they're not, that they are going to lose here. And that has a huge impact for the ad space. And then the copyright stuff is absolutely fascinating to me because you know, you can win all the other stuff, but if at the end of the day the AI companies are able to take that data and use it for generative AI without any compensation and, and then repurpose it and then have that repurposed content being subject to the section 230 liability shield, it's game over. I like, literally, I don't know what this space, what, what happens to the, to the publishing community if all of that stuff happens.
- [26:28]
Marty Swandt
Yeah, it's so true. You mentioned section 230. It's interesting. I always think of, I'm blinking. Which case it was I was listening to, it was like the SCOTUS cases where there was, you know, the Google case and the Twitter case happened kind of simultaneously. Like there was a question, I think it was Justice Gorsuch, if I remember right. But he was asking, I know this always kind of stuck in my mind and I'm oversimplifying kind of the setup here, but kind of asked the question of will generative content be, you know, should that be detected by Section 2? I don't remember his exact quote, but I remember looking at this quite a while ago and thinking it stood out to me when he said it because it seemed like he was both asking the question and also toying with the idea of if something is generated, is no longer protected by section 230. Again, this is in 2023. And so we've seen that the content spaces have evolved so much since then. And I've wondered if his thinking or any of the other justice thinking has changed much since then because that is a huge, like I said, there's a huge implication for what is considered generative and what isn't. And so it's. But yeah, when you mentioned that, you know, section 230, that popped my mind. That's going to be a huge implication for things.
- [27:29]
Alan Chappelle
Yeah. And, and you know, it's interesting. So I, I don't want to get on another soapbox. But, but, but one of the challenges, you know, section 230 makes all the sense in the world provided that those who benefit from it do a good faith effort or make a good faith effort at moderating content. And we've, that whole thing seems to have been thrown out the window and like long term for big tech, that's probably not a great thing. I know why they're doing it. And you know, fair enough, you're bending to the whim of a current administration, but all you're doing is, is you are creating enemies or at least lack of friends for section 230. So that when it comes to revamping it on the hill, section 230 is going to have fewer and fewer friends. And then, and then, and then what?
- [28:16]
Marty Swandt
I don't know if it's, you know, good faith moderation, but at the same time they're also being criticized for moderating content. So it's like, is it a catch 22 of hey, like you should moderate this, but yet if you don't, you're liable under section 2. So it's like this weird catch 22 that the platform and I don't know, maybe they're seeing it, maybe they're not. I mean, it just seemed like there's this weird setup. Like I said, there's, it's, it's a hard spot to be in when you want to maybe moderate in a good way, but when you try to, you, you get criticized as well.
- [28:42]
Alan Chappelle
Yeah, no, and, and, and also you've got to like read between the lines because there's really only a certain type of content that should be moderated in, in the views of a number of policymakers. And so like I look, they're in a tough spot. I, I don't think they've helped themselves. And I think you're seeing like with the New York AGS case against TikTok, I think you're seeing them get really creative so as to circumvent the Section 230 shield, you know, long term. I don't think that's good news for big tech.
- [29:09]
Marty Swandt
Yeah, and just one of the thoughts, you just connected those dots there. I remember when, when the ad tech, when the DOJ put out its press release, I, I, I noticed that both of the quotes from the AG and the assistant AG kind of hinted at the whole question around content moderation and whatnot. And it just made me think of it was a non existent part of the whole case. And so looking at kind of the moderation side of things and the censorship to use that word there. So it's interesting seeing it in their victory press release about the trial. So I don't know, I'll be very curious to see how that, I don't know if you noticed that or any thoughts on that too, but it was interesting to see censorship come up two or three times in the press release about the ad tech outcome in a way that it wasn't even really a big part of the case to begin.
- [29:51]
Alan Chappelle
With in my view and you can take this for the free advice or free thought that it is, in my view you almost have to bifurcate. There are certain narratives being put out even by the FTC and to a lesser extent the DOJ that are red meat narrative narratives for a certain political constituency. But you almost have to bifurcate that from some of the more legit enforcement type of work that they're doing. But I also do that as a self preferencing measure or a self enablement measure because if you pay attention to everything going on right now, you could easily drive yourself crazy. And so the question is what is it that you pay attention to so that you can do what, what it is that you need to do in order to, to be a good journalist versus like you know, and, and good citizen to a certain extent. And like not I, I, I hate watched so many press conferences during the COVID era. And I've sort of learned from that mistake.
- [30:53]
Marty Swandt
No, I hear you. Yeah, that's a very good point. Yeah, it's like, and so it makes it hard to cover so many things at once right now because there's, there's far more news than there is time to cover. And so that's the downside of, we've seen so many different, you know, you know, media companies have to have layoffs because of cling revenue, whatever else, and there's a need for journalists increasingly right now rather than less so. So it's, it makes it hard to, no pun intended, to be judicious, I guess, with like, you know, what we're covering.
- [31:17]
Alan Chappelle
So I, I got one more question for you. And, and this has been a lot of fun, but you recently wrote a piece about AI for the New York Times. And, and the, the piece was about AI use by big tech potentially disrupting the ad agency business model. And so what parallels can you draw between this disruption and perhaps the disruption of publisher models via programmatic advertising?
- [31:38]
Marty Swandt
I really do think the lawsuits versus the deals is going to be a big thing to watch. But to the point of that piece and the agency side of things, I think there are a few things. On the one hand, I know that Google and Meta and all the others have historically been the pipes. But as they use generative AI to fill the pipes, the question is what will the value of a new idea be like? For agencies, for example, that's, you know, that's been their idea for a long time, is we have really good ideas for our clients, creative, you know, conceptual, all these things. You know, when I was writing that piece, like the last line that was what's the market rate for a new idea? Or something like that? And I wonder like, will people still pay agencies for the same amount or will they still want the same top class creative assets if they can get something that's mediocre or decent, you know, through, you know, Meta's platform or Google's platform or Pinterest or whatever else. And I think a lot of, from what a lot of people have said, both like large agencies and also a lot of major brands, we want to make sure that we still are standing out. And that's where we go to agencies for. We want to go to get something that's not going to be a commoditized creative asset or we want to get something that's going to. How do you stand above the noise right now in, you know, any given for advertising? But for agencies, one of the things I'm wondering is when you're putting your creative through these pipes, the metaphor I keep thinking of is let's say you're doing business with somebody, but in order to do business with that person, you have to put your best ideas through a scanner owned by your competitor. And, and that scanner competitor can also reproduce your ideas and distribute them a lot faster than you can. And so like what's going to keep. So when it comes to training data, are agencies putting in place things to limit platforms from? Because, you know, think of performance data for example, or because they're, they're called walled gardens for a reason. Right. It's, it's like there's certain things that, you know, agencies have histor historically wanted to get more from platforms in terms of any kind of data offering. What are the platforms keeping for themselves right now that maybe agencies don't even know to ask for in terms of what's working, what's not for creative assets? So I don't know, it's, I think that's going to be a big thing to watch. Are there certain things that are put into place to protect agencies or whatnot from, you know, IP related issues there? But I guess brands, they own the IP of their ads, so it's like the agencies don't even own the ip. There's. So I think that's something to watch. I think there's so many other implications for. I mean, I haven't thought about this until now, but I wonder if there are some interesting correlations between how publishers dealt with meta back then and how, you know, just thinking of, instead of, instead of news and content, it's ads and creative. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that, but it's fantastic to watch.
- [34:12]
Alan Chappelle
Yeah. So, you know, as somebody who got into this space in like the mid-90s, you know, there was a time where, where a newspaper publisher had a mini monopoly on certain things that were wildly lucrative, like classified ads. And so what happened over time is like a lot of that stuff kind of got stripped from the model. So. But a lot of that was really profitable. And then, so then the question is like, well, what's left? Because you got all the expensive journalism stuff still there and, and you know that's trying to be supported by ads and you've got big tech taking a larger and larger cut of that. So you look at the agency model and there's a lot of stuff that I would imagine is really lucrative for them that probably other people can Do. And so to the extent that that stuff gets stripped, it sort of does beg the question, like, if all the agency is being paid for is like, for the man I'm aging myself. The where's the Beef ad, like that tagline, like, whatever, you know, if that's what they're being paid for. Query whether the brands want to pay a bazillion dollars just for a single tagline. Because they're thinking that's all they're getting. Whereas in the olden days they were getting a. A discrete, like a whole, you know, package of different things.
- [35:25]
Marty Swandt
Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm wondering too. Like, like, what will people pay for those ideas? And I do see, on the other hand, a lot of agencies are building out their own platforms and using the tools. And I think a lot of them are earnestly optimistic about the use of, let's say, like, you know, VO2 and VO3, like for, for video productions. But that. Or, but like, I wonder, yeah, I wonder, will the use of those tools be. Be worth whatever they end up losing in the process?
- [35:48]
Alan Chappelle
Yeah, it's going to be really interesting. Watch. Maybe Brian Lesser has figured it out. I don't know. But certainly a smart guy.
- [35:56]
Marty Swandt
Yeah, that is true.
- [35:57]
Alan Chappelle
I've got one more question for you. We asked most guests this question, like, what is your, you know, semi secret hobby or passion?
- [36:04]
Marty Swandt
Yeah, good question. Well, depends on the day. But my wife and I, we love bringing our dog to the park in the garden. So we've got a cavapoo named Willoughby. And so that's something we've now, that's summer and spring. We love taking him to the park. He also loves breweries and coffee shops. So he's a. He's a dog about town. So that's one thing. And then I think the other, the more of the secret passion, you know, the dog thing is no secret. You know, you mentioned being a music guy. I used to do a lot of music, you know, love playing guitar, used to be a songwriter and stuff like that. During COVID I kind of accidentally got into poetry. So I had bought this typewriter from, you know, right. From this really cool typewriter store in Chelsea right before. Right before lockdown. So I started writing a lot of just processing lockdown with this typewriter and a friend in the poetry space. I was just talking to them one day. He's like, marty, this is poetry. This is really good. I've never tried publishing things, but it just got me really interested in poetry in a way that I hadn't been before and started reading a lot of it and writing some. And I've noticed as a journalist I I think differently when I write in poetry than I do when I write in nonfiction. And I also write differently when I use a typewriter than I do when I using a laptop, for example, when I'm handwriting. So that's probably my I don't have a lot of hobbies, but I love to kind of explore that kind of category of writing because it just helps me think differently.
- [37:20]
Alan Chappelle
I love that. I love that as a musician I find that my songwriting gets influenced by like what other other things that I'm doing or by my, you know, five year old or whatever, all that stuff. But also what I love is like I bought a typewriter at probably some secondhand shop is like a very Brooklyn story. I absolutely love it.
- [37:41]
Marty Swandt
It's great. It's a great Gramercy typewriter still around. It used to be in gramercy. Now it's 100 years old.
- [37:47]
Alan Chappelle
Fantastic.
- [37:48]
Marty Swandt
Yeah, it's just fun.
- [37:49]
Alan Chappelle
Marty Swan, thank you so much for coming on. This was a lot of fun.
- [37:52]
Marty Swandt
Thanks for having me.
- [37:53]
Alan Chappelle
Take care. Thank you for listening to the marketecture podcast. New episodes come out every Friday, and an insightful vendor interview is published each Monday. You can subscribe to our library of hundreds of executive interviews at marketecture tv. You can also sign up for free for our weekly newsletter with my original strategic insights on the week's news at News Market tv. And if you're feeling social, we operate a vibrant Slack community that you can apply to join@adtechgod.com.