Stop saying no to responsible advertising

It’s been a typically eventful and interesting month in digital advertising, with the headlines dominated at various points over the last few weeks by some wide-ranging themes.

AI personalisation and content creation have, of course, been in the news, as have privacy-first advertising sustainable and ethical advertising. Regulatory actions have seldom been far from the headlines either, as the EU fined Apple and Meta for Digital Markets Act violations; then there was the almost inevitable conclusion of Google’s on-off love affair with third-party cookies, as it came clean and announced that it would not, after all, be deprecating them in its Chrome browser – a move that ultimately surprised no-one.

Some of these themes are hot new topics, generating excited forecasts of the brave new future they promise. Others are the latest instalments in long-running adtech soap operas that no-one has yet managed to script a happy ending for – nor even a more complicated series of twists and turns to make such a thing possible. 

Regardless of where your interests lie, however, there is a fundamental theme underpinning all these topics – and that is the way in which we are moving towards a more innovative, efficient, ethical and relevant version of digital advertising. 

If we want a more responsible ecosystem, we must all play our part

This is great news, but as we all know, sometimes fundamental change in advertising can take a long time to bring about. And so our goal, and our MO, should be to do what is in our own control to speed up the move towards innovation, efficiency and more ethical practices.

In this respect, I feel like some of us are more motivated than others, and that it’s all too easy for inertia to take hold. That is understandable when you think about the number of years we have spent just bolting on more and more tech to solve an issue, rather than taking the time to think about things from the ground up.

There’s no blame here – we all have the day-to-day meetings and spreadsheets to attend to, for the sake of the clients who pay the bills. There often isn’t the time, or indeed the desire, to stop and think how we might be able to do things better. 

Responsible advertising delivers better outcomes

Moreover, the decision-making power lies in the hands of the few. The good news is, those decision-makers are now waking up to the fact that responsible advertising is more efficient and delivers better outcomes, with less waste and negative impact on consumers. That’s a great opportunity for the people who make the big decisions to kill many birds with one stone – to the benefit of their customers, the bottom line, the reputation of the industry overall, and their own personal glory. 

Because, contrary to popular belief, responsible advertising and business success are not mutually exclusive. In fact by adopting better, more sustainable and scaled best practices, we can expedite this better world and get closer to achieving the business goals – sustained profitability, growth, happy clients and consumers – that we all shoot for.

TL;DR
For the TL;DR version of this post, I’ll leave you something that transatlantic rower Felicity Ashley said at a recent BeBold event that really resonated with me: “Stop giving me reasons why you can’t, and give me a reason why you can.” If we all adopt this mantra, who knows where it might take us?

Also published in: New Digital Age