The Curation We Should Be Talking About
The sell side desperately wants a role in curating ad inventory for buyers, but are we paying attention to the right "curation?"
Midjourney Prompt: “A teenager contemplating what elements of society she would like to permit to communicate with her”
I’m still of the opinion that a combination of distrust in ad sellers, brought about by high levels of programmatic ad fraud, will make advertisers more apt to push the concept of curated ad environments to their agencies or in-house buying teams. The notion that there’s some signal that doesn’t reach buyers and thus takes inventory off their radar is intriguing. But there’s so much for which they are getting signal that one wonders if it’s enough incentive to have every seller rushing to curate inventory for the buy side.
But that’s neither here nor there.
If you want to talk about curation, we should be talking about human media consumption habits.
Our Sins Bite Us in the Butt
You should be noticing an important trend - one that’s been under development for years - when it comes to young people’s media consumption habits. “Curation” is the main descriptive term here.
Large, open platforms that publish young people’s content to the Internet at large are no longer the cornerstone of social media presence. Carefully curated environments are. The role of social media is still to keep young people connected with their friends, the lists of people they’re allowed to connect with are very highly controlled.
For kids who are still in school, some of this is the result of moms and dads wanting to keep their kids away from harm. The effect lingers for people in their 20s and early 30s who are out from under parental protections. But for them, it’s more about curating the audience that’s allowed to interact with their content - because the open Internet is effing bonkers.
Ain’t Got Time for Randos…
For a lot of young people, in fact, the open Internet characterized by “anyone can be a follower” and algorithmically-driven access to content is a less-important feature than the curated lists of friends that make up much of their social media use. The “Group Chat” is often policed with an itchy trigger finger, whether it’s on WhatsApp or merely over text.
Though not a young person, I’ve been accosted on the open Internet by people who have convinced themselves that my organic gardening hobby is some sort of liberal plot to take over the known universe, or people who hate my political persuasion so much that they automatically challenge everything that comes out of my mouth.
Young people are tired of these jerks, too. And they actively police their own social circles for them, starting out with a default approach that’s more “you need to ask for (revocable) permission to see my stuff” than “Let’s become a social media star by letting anyone and everyone see my stuff.”
Sorry, Mr. Algorithm.
This curation of content and connection has led to increased consumption via channels that are:
Less reliant on algorithms that are used to drive engagement, and
Less reliant on ad revenue.
The ad-supported and algorithmically-driven environments are certainly not being driven to extinction, but do note that young people are doing the same thing young people have been doing since forever - moving away from the consumption habits of their parents while avoiding ads and seeking uncluttered places in which to connect with one another meaningfully.
For advertisers, this means a growing digital audience that is beyond the reach of their programmatic ad tools - what Adam Gerber has referred to as “media potholes.”
Keeping Out Prying Eyes
An undercurrent of pro-privacy sentiment adds to the mix - the idea that perhaps someone mentioning a sneaker brand in a PM ought not to trigger Nike ads following one around the open web for months - and awareness of enshittification cycles is a terrific reinforcement mechanism.
The result is a digital experience for younger people that is more insular than that of their parents.
Which is not to say that the parents are still buying what algos and adtech are selling, either.
I find myself shifting more and more of my media consumption to private channels on Discord, private forums or invitation-only group chats. My non-ad-industry friends are seeing the benefits of being able to use their ad-supported tools and platforms while using a network-wide ad blocker and marveling at the speed when the ads are disabled. Even more are cultivating content behind closed doors, because opening those doors means more randos, bots, intrusive ads and ragefests brought on by algorithms.
We’re Talking About the Wrong Curation
The digital ad business will continue to debate who is best suited to take on the role of curating ad inventory. (I still think this moves as close to the advertiser as technology will permit it to get.) But I think the curation we need to be talking about has more to do with the media consumption habits of the people who will be potential customers of brands over the next several years.
They’re coming to the table with a healthy understanding of why they need to avoid you, and they’re hip to the methods you’ve used to aggregate them under the umbrella of “audiences.” They know that you’re still underwriting the rage machine, and depending on their engagement with purposefully-rage-inducing content to get to them. And it’s not a good look for you.
What Would Be a Good Look, Then?
I’ve seen few advertisers embrace the notion that consumption habits are moving in this direction. Those that can embrace it will reach valuable pockets of people who can’t be reached through other vehicles. Perhaps we should celebrate the move to more private channels. Look for ways to sponsor that movement.
The platforms currently benefitting from this move may not have figured out how to monetize yet, and they’re following the mantra of capturing the audience first and figuring out how the money comes in once they have a valuable audience asset.
Advertisers should be helping them. Give them a way to monetize while keeping the support respectful to the end user, so that they’re not fleeing to another channel. Think utility sponsorships, not plastering as many banner ads as possible all over the landscape.
Your extension of utility can generate brand loyalty. Keep that in mind.