After years of tension, the relationship between traditional forms of media and big tech has reached boiling point, with Facebook sensationally revealing its plans to opt out of local content deals on Friday.
The feelings weren’t helped by a noticeable difference in fortunes amid a “challenging” ad market. Whilst Nine, Seven, and SCA all revealed substantial profit drops for the second half of last year, Meta’s ad revenue jumped by nearly a quarter in Q4 2023.
The news has led to more existential questions about the advertising industry itself. Was the rise of big tech in advertising preventable? And crucially, where are we heading as an industry?
Speaking to B&T before this news broke, Cannes jury member and founder of MakeLoveNotPorn Cindy Gallop warned that the advertising industry had given its power away to big tech.
“Meta would never have made this billions without advertising,” she said.
“We are the business model for the internet,” she said, adding that the model is just content with ads around it.
“But we gave that power away”.
“We begged Snapchat, TikTok, and Meta to allow us to advertise with them instead of saying ‘We are their business model.’ Now let’s use that power to make what we want.”
Gallop is optimistic about the future and the potential of the industry adding “There’s so much potential for reinvention and making an absolute golden f*cking shit tonne,” she said.
The problem she says, however, is that many of the people who have made their fortune in ads are no longer backing the future of the industry.
“The white men who have made all of their money out of our industry do not believe in its future. They make that money, then they rush off to play with the big boys in Silicon Valley. They all want to be in on the s*xy deals, you know, they want to hang out with Elon [Musk]”.
“It’s interesting because this is not the case in any other industry. The white men at the top who have made their money are absolutely funding the future of the industry”.
“ A future of advertising is being built by women and people of colour, but the white men at the top aren’t funding it”.
B&T contacted Meta for comment.
