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10 DIGS.NET | 5.24.2019 Warren J Dow | Publisher wdow@Southbaydigs.com | 310.373.0142 The Connection Age – Phase Three The worldwide web was born only 25 years ago. And the impact on the world continues to be monumental. Just think about all of the companies, technologies, and commerce that have been created during this period of time. It's stupendous. Now, we're entering what some are calling the third phase of the connection age, where data will connect to data (Artificial Intelligence), things will connect to things (Internet of things), and there will be entirely new ways for us to connect (Alexa, Siri, Google Assist). According to Rishad Tobaccowala, chief growth officer of Publicis, the global trade value of data flows is now greater than the global trade value of merchandise. Big data is no longer just big, it's astronomical. Imagine everything in the world that flows through the trade of goods like oil, cars, food, electronics, medicine, clothing – you name it, the trade value of data flows is bigger! The impact on marketing has been traumatic when you consider how it has eroded consumer trust at every level. The fact that online ad fraud has grown to $50 billion per year, and that for every ad dollar spent online, only 25 cents reaches consumers (per the ANA) – it's no wonder that click rates for online ads are reported to be only 5 to 10 per 10,000 ads served. The marketing environment has become the world's biggest all-you-can-eat buffet where supply and choice are endless, and consumers, bloated with an over consumption of content, now suffer the gluttonous consequences – apathy, disillusionment, and fatigue. And The Internet Buffet Continues To Grow According to the recent We Are Social and Hootsuite's Global Digital 2019 Report, internet users are growing by an average of more than one million new users every day. And internet use and penetration are accelerating as more than 360 million people came online for the first time in 2018. Key global findings from the report include: • 4.4 billion internet users in 2019, up 9% over 2018. • 5.11 billion unique mobile users in the world today, up 2% or 100 million from last year. Marketing truth – stranger than fiction P U B L I S H E R ' S M U S E • 3.5 billion social media users, up 9% or 288 million from 2018. • Internet users on average spend 6 hours and 42 minutes online each day, same as 2018. Has the world of marketing become The Matrix? Are consumers now living in a superficial and pleasing false reality where marketers now empowered with data are controlling the game? No conspiracy theory here, just saying. Scarcity (Attention) Versus Unlimited (Content/Messaging/Distribution) It's a battle royal for the consumer's share of mind – who wins? Fewer and fewer, that's for sure. The marketing inmates are running the marketing asylum, and it's getting uglier every day. Add to this the ability of bots to hyperscale fake traffic, profiles, accounts, and the subsequent fraud and waste of precious ad dollars that result. Case in point, Facebook purged 1.3 billion fake accounts recently. Moreover, according to Facebook it had 2.38 billion active monthly users as of March 31, 2019 – that's 31% of the people on earth with a Facebook account. What? How is this possible when there are on 7.7 billion people in the entire world? But really, who cares? These numbers are provided behind a closed veil of data secrecy, so we're all being asked to trust without the ability to verify. Reach Is Overrated To help illustrate this point, please allow me to borrow from Seth Godin, whose marketing mind I admire fondly (if you can't tell by now). Seth states that reach is perhaps the biggest misconception in marketing & advertising. Plenty of media/brands/events have reach – the Super Bowl, Google, Facebook, radio, etc. So what? Why do you care if you can, for more money, reach more people? Why wouldn't it be better and make more sense to reach the right people instead? Reach really doesn't matter at all, because your job isn't to interrupt people at scale, with each having different interests. Your job is to interact with people who care. As Seth states, "Running an ad on the most popular podcast isn't smart if the most popular podcast reaches people who don't care about you. Perhaps it makes sense to pay extra to reach precisely the right people. It never makes sense to pay extra to reach more people." Micro Is Better Than Macro Small is the new big. Why? Because as outlined above, we're killing consumers with content, using data to continuously harass them, and continue to believe that the more we yell, the more we hype, the more we promote, the more we leverage – the more they'll pay attention, engage, and buy. The bottom line, consumer trust is being destroyed, boredom has set in, and they don't give a shit about your marketing noise anymore – congratulations! Marketer's don't despair, there is light at the end of the tunnel, it's not over yet. What everyone has forgotten in the new marketing hysteria is that while everything has changed in the connect age, the fundamentals of earning trust have not. To quote Seth Godin again, "Ideas spread from person to person. Horizontally. Because someone who encountered an idea cared enough to spread the word, to talk about it, to insist that friends and colleagues pay attention, if just for a moment." "Your ability to reach a tiny group of committed fans is essential. But the work spreads because of the fans, not because you figured out how to spend money to interrupt more and more strangers." Patience marketing grasshoppers, slow down, think small and just remember that consumer trust is the one and only thing that's sacred in the world of marketing. Until next time ~