Thread by @antoniogm

Since the intersection of ads and Web3 seems to be rather ... desolate ... at the moment and nobody has written much here (kudos to @aripap for doing so), I'm going to do a point-by-point analysis of this thread, some of which I agree with (and some not).

https://twitter.com/aripap/status/1474039478671003652

@aripap True, and one of the great open questions to me is whether tokens are enough to bankroll Web3 or if you still need ads (or if Web3 can contribute to the existing ads ecosystem in some way). Nobody has a hard, informed answer here yet. Early days, etc.

https://twitter.com/aripap/status/1474039534274949128

Yes, much of Web3 interest is not necessarily that it's vastly superior technology, it's the fact it undermines the existing media firmament, and is still an unregulated frontier. It's not just a better mousetrap, it's an unregulated and un-dominated one.

https://twitter.com/aripap/status/1474039580957499395

It's true there isn't a huge number of compelling Web3 consumer experiences (yet). But there wasn't for the early Internet either.

First email sent: 1971
Hotmail founded: 1996

We're still in the base layers of a new network stack.
Give it a minute...

https://twitter.com/aripap/status/1474039900446072832

The trollery here by @aripap is justified: 'pay users for their data' is the sempiternal chorus of the ads-haters and privacy zealots, and it's the dumbest thing ever. It's like an inverse shibboleth that marks you as someone who's clueless about data.

https://twitter.com/aripap/status/1474039937246928906

@aripap The fact there's Magic Internet Money via Web3 tokens doesn't change the fact that your data:

1. Is worth a lot less than you think
2. Is impossible to account for in any rational and scalable way, given the targeting complexities, so metering it is dumb

https://twitter.com/aripap/status/1474040269616070658

This un-reason around metered user data isn't unique to Web3 of course (I've railed against it in the past).

But frankly, Web3 proponents are doing themselves no favors by proposing a technical solution that's essentially a business non-starter.

wired.com/story/no-data-…

Here we get to some disagreement. Because there's a centralization vs. decentralization tension inside ad tech that I think @aripap is glossing over...and which is relevant to Web3's possibilities inside what's now a 20+ year old industry.

https://twitter.com/aripap/status/1474040458091323392

@aripap Ok, @aripap, now let's resize the logos here by fraction eaten of every ads dollar that transits @tkawaja's maze.

Does it still look decentralized? Or are most ad tech companies scraping by while a subset of big pubs/players make most of the profit?

https://twitter.com/aripap/status/1474040557353721856

@aripap @tkawaja There's a huge (de)centralization tension inside ad tech. Take the key task of attribution (i.e. counting all the installs and clicks, the literal cash register). Big tug of war between GOOG/FB doing the counting for you, and my former employer Branch being a neutral third-party.

Readers of 'Chaos Monkeys' might recall the dramas involved in trying to push FB to be more open and decentralized via a programmatic exchange (something I staked my career there on). Only begrudgingly did they do it, and they killed it as soon as they could (which was a while).

As a side note, what do attribution providers like Branch, AppsFlyer, etc. really do? They provide a selectively-readable, publicly writable ledger of past actions, allowing multiple parties to agree on shared state with no central control.

Sounds a lot like a blockchain....

So agree on 1 (but it's early).
2 is definitely right and Web3 should get the memo already.
3 is directionally wrong, IMO. Centralization has won in ad tech, and a move to decentralize should be welcome, for the same reason we need decentralized media.

https://twitter.com/aripap/status/1474040851890327566

Lastly, I'm surprised @aripap was universally critical.

Consider this ad tech mercenary: In Web3, every transaction from some minor ecommerce thing, to a million-dollar piece of art, is completely public and undeletable. The *entire* transaction record is just sitting there.

@aripap Here's an exercise for the reader: build a front-end for a Web3 site that reads the user wallet and fires the usual ad tech cookie-sync'ing, and profile the user based on crypto while also targeting them via conventional ads. It would be an interesting data fusing-of-the-worlds.

Then drop a unique NFT in the wallet, as browsers drop cookies, to track users as they themselves navigate the blockchain and transfer assets around.

To the extent wallet->online identity, and everyone opts into wallet sharing in Web3, you've recreated the ad tech machinery.

Of course, it's a privacy nightmare, and if the EU ever figured this out, they'd be shaking in their lederhosen.

But that's hits on another big question with ads/Web3: the blockchain is antithetical to GDPR notions of privacy...and it's not clear it's fixable.