Navigating America’s Divided Advertising Landscape
I recently attended a high-level dinner for media and marketing executives at the New York headquarters of one of the largest publicly traded social media platforms. Spotify’s “Joe Rogan problems” was a large topic of conversation. While there were a wide variety of opinions at the table ranging from support for all free speech and the need to defend the “slippery slope,” to nuanced middle grounds, to those who believed Spotify should walk from the deal, one larger topic arose with full agreement. It seems the challenge mass marketers, large brands and media platforms face today is in navigating and communicating with a deeply polarized nation.
Can a brand, media company or platform serve a mass audience that crosses the belief barriers? Is there room for a company to serve all audiences?
The media mission of large brands and marketers in America used to be the efficient and effective delivery of their target audiences in mass media, to sell high volumes of product. That was defined by media buying demographics like “adults ages 18-54,” or “women ages 18-44” or “men ages 18-34.” They bought prime-time television and live sports, later morphing to broad Facebook, YouTube or programmatic digital buys.
Today, with media consumption deeply fragmented and polarized, with varying versions of nearly every narrative and with the default desire for confirmation bias, can we find a middle ground?
Spotify’s situation brings up some interesting questions: Should companies conduct business in ways that are at the expense of certain audiences or genres? Or should they exit certain business deals to retain core customers?
Case studies in how other situations were handled don’t point to a clear path. In looking at how Netflix handled the Dave Chapelle situation, one can argue that Netflix took a strong position behind the free speech of creatives and doubled down on it. They refused to remove Chapelle’s material, lived through other creators speaking out, fired dissenting employees (alleging the leak of confidential material to the press) and pressed through. Prior to their issues in current earnings reports around slowing growth, they seem to have not only survived but continued to benefit from their position, announcing a series of comedy specials produced by Chappelle. One could argue, one of Netflix’s core missions is to do business with top creatives to glean exclusive content.
When I was a global executive at Activision, there were instances when we were pulled into the news cycles around school shootings, given that we had sold $10 billion worth of Call of Duty. Our approach was to not get pulled into the news cycle and to not be forced into picking a side or breaking down video games’ possible role in violence. We let third-party organizations and researchers make their case and stayed out of the gun debate, remaining firmly in the gaming and entertainment narratives. Here, we took no side, did not even enter the conversation officially and focused on the core business: selling entertainment and games.
The Rolling Stone Culture Council is an invitation-only community for Influencers, Innovators and Creatives. Do I qualify?
However, neither Netflix nor Activision are advertising and brand-supported media ecosystems.
Meta and Twitter are media- and brand-supported. Here, mirroring an often default view in Silicon Valley, the behavior has largely relied on protections offered by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. While there have been some attempted advertiser boycotts, they either did not generate large-scale adoption or have much material impact on the business. At our dinner table of 10, only one executive had paused Facebook advertising in the Cambridge Analytica era and pushed hard to get the platform to make some changes. After some modest concessions, his brand returned to Facebook.
News destinations are also advertising-supported. Given their rather set viewpoints, the advertising ecosystems look very different. With very little brand crossover and very different categories of advertisers. One sees almost no duplicated commercial messaging. Here, the tribal nature of the editorial views is mirrored in brands that have chosen as a side.
Trying to appease both sides seems to only extend the debate and news cycle. If nothing else, Spotify needs to take a clear, decisive position and stick to it, or risk losing both halves of a divided media landscape.
Regardless of Spotify’s final decision in the matter of Joe Rogan, the challenge of navigating a polarized and politically fragmented media landscape will continue to plague advertising agencies and brands that need to reach broad audiences at scale. Tribalism will reduce the size of markets for mass-market brands. Not every product can or should become a “virtue badge.” If we believe that educating consumers on price and product benefit is of value, who suffers when the great bulk of messages no longer have scale? It’s the consumer who ends up with fewer choices and a narrower range of prices, and it’s the advertiser who ends up with fewer media choices, which will also undermine marketplace pricing.
Madison Avenue, Wall Street and Main Street must all work together to reverse this trend. If not, all players in the value equation lose.