Digital Duopoly Under Pressure
The digital duopoly is looking riper for replacement every day. While Facebook and Google remain incredibly powerful when it comes to everything else in the market, there may be some reason to think that maybe… just maybe their duopoly isn’t as much of an inevitability as it seems , and I’m not just talking about Amazon.
Playing Scared
Last week, a report from The Verge revealed that Google’s search ads look a lot more like organic content than they ever have in the past. While Google is disclosing the paid placements, it’s doing so with an ‘Ad’ favicon next to paid results that blend right in with the favicons of organic content.
The tweak, which is the target of much criticism, may be meant to help Google’s ad revenue. Google’s share of search ad revenue is expected to drop over the next two years. This change, over a very limited time however, has shown click-through rates for some businesses increasing.
Facebook’s in a situation in which it’s waging a PR battle, and it’s losing. Recently, Teen Vogue published an article praising Facebook. It was shared by Facebook execs as being a great piece. Then it was revealed the content was sponsored before the article was ultimately finally removed. The incident had all the markings of a company that desperately wants to un-tarnish its reputation and in doing so, just made things worse.
Both platforms have every reason to be confident that they face no real threat at the moment, but their latest moves show that concern, to some degree, is creeping in.
Traditional Players Want Their Money Back
It’s worth noting that while Facebook and Google have been growing, traditional players haven’t been sitting on the sidelines. Project OAR was started as a collection of TV companies with the goal of setting addressable TV standards.
The promise of traditional media powered by digital technology has been circulating for quite some time, but the reality is getting closer. The more people stream, the greater the opportunity. It’s territory where the traditional players have a leg up.
Tracking Isn’t What It Used to Be
The cookie is dying. Pretty soon, it’ll be useless to the digital ad platforms that rely on them for the ad targeting digital advertisers have come to expect. In an effort to make the Web more “private,” tech companies like Apple and Google are removing third-party cookie tracking from their browsers. This could be a problem for Google as it does use third-party cookies for some of its ad products, but it could also greatly benefit them. Google collects a lot of its own data on users, and the death of the cookie could make advertisers even more reliant on the data that Google owns than they already are.
It could, however, go the the other way. Advertisers could be resistant to relying on Google than they already are and instead shift to the premium offerings of publishers or even place their ads in endemic contexts versus relying on targeting users specifically.
Not the Swagger of the Past
The digital duopoly is probably not going away anytime soon, but clearly there’s a crunch. Whether it’s calls for regulation, advertisers frustrated with the power dynamic or alternatives growing more powerful, they don’t have the confidence they used to. And that may be what’s best for them to maintain their leadership positions.