Interesting opportunities can catch us by surprise. ThinkMedium’s founder, Dennis Buchheim, has joined Snowflake, leading adtech/martech, media, and entertainment GTM. With this news, ThinkMedium is “on hiatus” — and its inaugural team is beyond grateful to everyone who enabled our success. Please reach out to Dennis via LinkedIn or ThinkMedium email to be connected with consultants who can help you (or to discuss Snowflake!). And watch for ThinkMedium part 2 down the road… Thank you!
A HEALTHY ADS ECOSYSTEM IS OUR GOAL
Ongoing privacy, safety, and efficiency shifts mean that advertising and media companies can’t afford to focus on short-term goals in isolation. Instead, it’s critical to manage medium-term growth effectively but responsibly, understanding and optimizing for constraints, while acknowledging each of our roles in enabling a healthy ecosystem.
An insufficient focus on ecosystem health has resulted in supply chain inefficiency, lack of transparency, consumer opt-outs, publisher monetization declines, and more. Through appropriate collaboration, a sustainable advertising and media industry can support all participants — consumers, marketers, agencies, publishers, and technology providers — in achieving their goals. And we can ensure that digital content and services remain freely accessible and useful.
ThinkMedium believes in transparency about business practices and views the rapid rise of Generative AI as a moment to demonstrate our commitment to being clear with our client, partner, and prospect community. This short post outlines our current use of AI-based technologies.
In just one year, GenAI has entered everyday conversations and seen adoption across industries. The benefit of everyone simultaneously leaning in is that we can learn from each other. While there have been some industry efforts to define AI principles, this post aims to apply industry-agnostic AI governance principles identified by academics to advertising use cases and prompt an industry discussion on defining/refining the responsible use of AI.
This comprehensive report provides a structured approach to understanding and addressing the potential impact of privacy laws, regulations, and platform policies details on TV advertising. It supports stakeholders in the media, advertising, and marketing ecosystems in revisiting their preparedness and risk tolerances, assessing the issues associated with different services and solutions and technologies, and building and partnering to enable growth in the face of privacy shifts.
It’s easy to get swept up in the promise of AI technology and its applications, let alone the boardroom drama (Cue "OpenAI: The Movie!"). The exuberance is not unfounded: AI may have $16T(!) of economic impact by 2030, and 75% of advertisers are using generative AI or will soon. But all is not rosy, of course. AI’s speed of innovation and deployment have raised concerns about harm to people and businesses. So, how do we balance the opportunities and risks?
"I really appreciated the opportunity to speak with BVDW for their DATA:matters week and share some thoughts on how European and US privacy regulation and platform policies have affected the advertising ecosystem, how AI will change data usage, what solutions are emerging for targeting and measurement, how we can collaborate globally, and more."
--Dennis Buchheim, ThinkMedium Founder
As the ad industry tackles privacy and data protection, it's crucial to maximize efficiency and effectiveness -- but solutions for measurement of both are being upended. Adapting requires employing durable strategies today and preparing to assess and adopt emerging solutions in the future that can complement or replace your portfolio. We share a framework for evaluating solutions and considering the privacy implications of required input and intended output.
(A ThinkMedium POV on the IAB Tech Lab Privacy event)
Insights and a call to action from an event that focused on: 1/ privacy-preserving solutions for advertising; 2/ regulatory/platform trends and industry standardization efforts; 3/ technology vendors, brands, agencies and platforms with their POV and concrete applications; and 4/ how to ensure interoperability across all constituents.
"Healthy habits are hard to form and even harder to maintain, especially after a lifetime of neglecting the advice of doctors to eat better and exercise more. Not a bad metaphor for how the online advertising ecosystem has been operating – and a big reason why it’s now facing a reckoning in the form of regulations and scrutiny of certain less-than-salubrious practices." Read more in this AdExchanger interview with ThinkMedium founder, Dennis Buchheim.
We launched ThinkMedium early this year, focusing on privacy and data, safety, and efficiency in ads and media. Our client engagements and interest from prospects have validated the industry's need for support in these areas -- with pragmatic ideas that foster “medium-term” success and support a healthy ecosystem. We're pleased to share more about our engagements and are excited about what comes next!
(ThinkMedium’s POV on Efficiency, one of our 3 focus areas)
Business, ecological, and technology efficiency is a strategic imperative for enterprises in the advertising and media spaces. They can be at odds in the short term, but they support each other – and a healthy ecosystem – in the medium term.