Supreme Court Rulings Have Big Effect on Marketing
When the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron doctrine last month, the executive VP at the Interactive Advertising Bureau said, “If I had a bottle of Champagne, I would be drinking it right now.”
Why?
Well, at the root of the Chevron doctrine was the powerful statutory authority of government departments. The Supreme Court says challenges to those department rules should not go unchecked by the courts. In a nutshell, the government, e.g. the FTC, can no longer be confident it has the right to regulate.
How does this effect advertising?
- Data brokers that sell consumer data will argue the FTC has no say in outlawing that sale. This data includes web browsing and geolocation data. (And all this is pretty ironic given the EU’s nearly opposite approach to consumer privacy concerns – see below.)
- Even non-anonymized data will be at play.
- The ability of consumers to determine whether they want their data shared will be at play. FTC and other pending legislation wants sensitive data turned off by default. The Chevron Doctrine overturn could change all this.
- Limits of collecting data on children is in play.
The real winner of this power struggle is the Supreme Court, whose docket will be busier than a bee colony, since they are the ultimate “decider.”. And since we all know how objective and fluent the courts are in the advertising economy – who knows how all this will shake out?
Cookie Deprecation May Have Paused, But The EU Hasn’t
This week Bloomberg Media wrote about new and stringent EU legislation aimed at big tech, which becomes enforceable next month.
And the EU is serious. Their fines for tech firms range from 6-20% of worldwide annual revenue. These rules include tactics that can make targeted advertising more challenging. Specifically:
- Platforms cannot favor their own services over rivals.
- Platforms cannot collect personal data from third-party merchants and then use it to compete against them.
- Ads to children are banned.
- Risk assessments of harmful content must be regularly submitted – and algorithms can be mandated to be adjusted.
That’s Not Funny – Or Is It?
I have Gen Z kids and, true confession, not a week goes by without me thinking, “I don’t get what’s funny about that.”
What is “funny” has evolved. Me? I’m still into slapstick. Give me a good old fashioned prat fall. But what is funny today is absurdist. Actually, it’s “Absurd” with a capital “A.” They call it “internet humor.”
This week Ad Age had a great article about humor in today’s advertising. The quote that stood out to me came from Party Land’s creative director, Natalia Fredericks, “Gen Z is so unserious about it all, while at the same time they want brands to take a stand on more serious topics. They use humor as a coping mechanism.”
The irony is that humor takes a lot more skill and talent to pull off than serious; Comedy scores oh-so-much higher in attention value; And, yet, judges from Cannes to Oscars love serious.
It’s 2024 – couldn’t we all use a little more humor in our creative?