GARM Gone

15 August 2024

Elon Musk’s decision to start legal action against the World Federation of Advertisers (the WFA) and their working group the now-sadly-departed Global Alliance for Responsible Media (X was a proud GARM member) on the basis that advertisers are not advertising on X is, to use a word of the moment, ‘weird’.

Others have had their fun pointing out how little Musk knows about the ad business, but his comments (and the video posted by his CEO Linda Yaccarino, who you would think would know a thing or two) do seem to be rooted in some fundamental differences between the ad business here (and elsewhere) and the USA.

First there is the belief that bigger simply must equal better.

The US media market has always tended to be a buying as opposed to a planning market. In buying markets, bigger audiences always mean more revenue.

In many places we’ve moved on from ‘biggest equalling best’ without any further discussion being required.

The notion of planning campaigns around a set of quality metrics and then buying against those metrics is simply not how it has traditionally been done in the US model.

This explains why the US is (I think) the only major media market where audiences on TV are reported not by commercial break but by programme within which the commercial break appears.

If the unit was the commercial break the gross number may go down. And that would never do – even if it reflected reality.

The fact that the media market has changed out of all recognition is not the point, the point is the continued focus on the biggest numbers.

I imagine Musk and Yaccarino find it hard to conceive that advertisers don’t just automatically go after the biggest numbers, whatever the circumstances. Whether the context is relevant to a brand’s needs, socially acceptable, whether the numbers are bot-driven, all of these are to a greater or lesser degree not part of their conversation.

X, and before it Twitter has never been particularly important for advertisers. The format isn’t conducive to showcasing great work, the audience is neither particular large in the context of others’, plus it’s easily reached elsewhere. And the surrounding ‘editorial’ has always been controversial.

What about freedom of expression, a term used on both sides of the Atlantic to mean different things, as Bruce Daisley, ex of Twitter, pointed out this week in ‘The Guardian’?

If you want to exercise your freedom of expression, within the law on X then good for you. But advertisers are free to advertise where they think most appropriate to meet their objectives and needs.

Often that place isn’t X.

The second difference between the media markets is that the US has often struggled with the concept of collaboration between competing parties.

Take audience measurement. Whereas most major ad markets operate a system within which research is commissioned and managed via a collaboration of all interested parties, the US does things differently.

Take TV, where Nielsen has for many years had the major contract. There has always been a quoted anti-trust issue that stops the industry collaborating fully to commission one source of audience truth. Whether this is a real issue or something confected decades ago by Nielsen and never challenged is a moot point.

To an outsider like me the US measurement industry has never seemed to move at the pace of other markets because of a) an obsession that only big numbers count, and thus anything reducing the headline number is undesirable and b) a belief that collaboration is somehow anti-competitive.

This is finally changing, slowly. Attention as a factor has emerged; so-called alternative currencies which are neither alternative (alternative to what?) nor currencies (surely you can only have one base currency?) at least have broadened the debate.

Meantime back in the land of the great suer, anyone who’s ever had anything to do with advertiser trade bodies will know that the very idea that they can somehow insist that advertisers act in concert in how and with whom they trade is delusional.

What trade bodies do is lobby governments, set standards, organise studies, and all manner of other activities that raise the bar for all. They’re frequently infuriating (‘why does everything take so long?’), and inevitably underfunded. The fact they work at all is down not only to the talents of those employed by them but also to an army of volunteers who do a sterling, unsung job for nothing.

Not only is Musk’s legal action against the WFA absurd (and I suspect won’t work as he intends) but it is also damaging to the industry. It could lead to advertisers thinking twice before joining any association whose goal is to collaborate for the greater good.

It will make the job of those working selflessly for the industry harder.

This is a complicated industry; far more complicated than ‘the biggest number wins’. We need representation in front of power, and standards, agreed by all and applied consistently in order to instil confidence in those who ultimately pay for everything.

Every boat, even X, rises on a rising tide.