1. Possible Has Us Wishing For Our Robot Overlords

One of the more interesting conversations taking place at Possible this week was around why the show actually exists.

Unlike, say, Cannes Lions or CES, there was no ulterior motive for something like 8,000 people to make their way down to Miami this week, and once they were there it was unclear just what they were supposed to do.

There were panels and keynotes and a very well-done “Hullaballoo at the Fontainebleau” debate, but few people seemed to be that aware of where these sessions actually were, nor did they seem all that interested in attending them.

Mostly they were happy to just mill about in the sunshine, taking meetings in cabanas and promising to catch up again two months later in Cannes.

Or, like TVREV, they were shooting video, using the sunshine and concentration of top executives to pump out some high quality content.

What was most notable though was just how many iterations of ad tech there were, multiple Lumascapes of startups doing things—mostly AI related—that seemed to replicate what a dozen other similar vowel-less startups were doing too.

None of whom seemed particularly aware of each other’s existence.

Why It Matters

If the premise of AI in ad tech comes true, then, to my understanding, few of these companies will be needed. Because the robot overlords will, among other things, eliminate the need for the ad tech tax by eliminating all of the guys who have been able to enrich themselves by identifying a tiny gap in what the other ad tech companies do and convincing agencies and brands that they will soon bankrupt themselves unless they add yet another layer of tech to the program.

Most of them have a hard time actually explaining what they do.

It’s what we have been calling “Optimizing the Processes”

As in “We help DSPs and SSPs to optimize their processes.”

“Which processes?”

“The ones that need optimizing.”

More than that though, I was struck by the sheer number of these companies, all of whom seemed to be meeting with each other, or hovering waiting for a chance to pitch me on the assumption that TVREV was some sort of CTV inventory provider.

It aligns with a theory I’ve heard on why Possible is so successful: it allows all those companies who can’t afford to go to Cannes a place to pitch their wares and all of the larger ad tech players a chance to send their better-performing junior employees, the ones who they can’t afford to send to Cannes.

What You Need To Do About It

If you are the Hyve Group, the company that owns Possible, well done on identifying and rapidly growing a market niche.

As the buzz around the show grows, I fully expect to see other types of companies show up en masse, especially the “TV tech” firms who, word on the street has it, are increasingly fed up with NAB. That includes operators and operating systems and even content distributors and more creator economy types.

Now if only the industry could decide to let Possible replace CES, a show that almost no one actually looks forward to attending.

If you are Our Robot Overlords, the streamlining of the ad buying ecosystem cannot come fast enough. 

I have no idea if you will be able to live up to your promise and actually eliminate all of the random niche vendors while creating a simple one-stop buying platform for every sort of advertising under the sun.

But a man can hope, can’t he?

If you are one of the hundreds of small start-ups scattered across a seemingly endless array of micro-categories, more power to you. Starting up a business is something to be proud of and you all are successful enough to book a flight to Miami and pay for an Airbnb.

That said, most of you need to work on your sales pitches, on explaining why your version of optimizing the processes is better than the next guy’s and what that means for your end user. 

Because to quote the world’s favorite Media Cartographer, “they all seem to do the same exact thing.”

My thoughts exactly.

2. Amazon Allegedly Going Full MAGA

The Wall Street Journal is reporting this week that Amazon is looking into making a reboot of The Apprentice, starring Donald Trump, Jr.

At first I wondered if they’d gotten things mixed up, forgotten that April Fool’s Day is the first day of the month, not the last, but alas this is no joke.

Which makes it all the more puzzling, 

Why It Matters

Amazon says it is looking to zig where Netflix is zagging, but there are a whole lot of ways to zig that don’t involve the Trump family.

Partisan politics aside, the move seems incredibly short-sighted on so many fronts.

First is the obvious—Trump will only be president for 32 more months and if a Democrat gets in, this will put Amazon in the crosshairs.

Being in the crosshairs is particularly dangerous for Amazon because members of Congress, many of whom are in their 70s, 80s and 90s, often have no idea what companies like Google and Meta do.

But Amazon?

That’s an easy one—they sell things.

And that makes it easy for Congress and/or the FTC to devise ways to break them up.

So there’s that and then there’s the amazing opportunity this would provide for Walmart Plus.

Walmart has been jonesing to take on Amazon for years and they’ve been steadily nibbling at the edges. But it’s not hard to imagine that many non-MAGA consumers would happily switch their spending to a decidedly non-partisan Walmart from a hyperpartisan Amazon.

Better still, Walmart would not have to lift a finger to make that happen—consumers will figure that out on their own and make it a thing.

Finally, there is the political danger in that move.

There is a very popular theory among political scientists and pundits (the journalist Katty Kay recently expounded on this on most excellent The Rest Is Politics US podcast) that says one of the factors behind Trump’s 2016 victory was that large segments of the non-coastal population accepted The Apprentice as fact, and had no idea how scripted it was, did not realize that the TV version of his business was largely fictional, and thus assumed he was indeed the astute and savvy businessman he played on the show. 

The theory is very much in line with what I have heard about other reality shows—that the people involved are often surprised at how so many people accept what goes on as fact, as if they were watching a documentary and not a very carefully scripted show where each cast member is assigned a specific role. 

America…

What You Need To Do About It

If you are Amazon, you need to do a hard rethink. 

I mean the Melania biopic was enough. But an Apprentice reboot with Don Junior? You are going to cross so many lines with that one and lose so many customers.

Because reality check: what you do is not all that amazing. It’s just that you have all the logistics down. And so it’s not a leap for someone like Walmart to jump in to steal your thunder while the FTC and Elizabeth Warren are busy figuring out how to break you up.

So just don’t.

If you are Walmart, make sure to have a bottle of champagne on hand just in case Amazon ignores the above advice.