TWW 049

Friday 21st January

January 20, 2022

Things you may have missed🏖

Things You Should Know 👀

Oh boy, this is damning. Google’s Project Bernanke has had newly unsealed complaints reveal how Google allegedly manipulated its online ad auctions and colluded with friendly social network Facebook to take control of the ad market. First off some theory, let’s discuss 1st, 2nd & 3rd price auctions…

1st = If Nicky bids $10, David bids $8 but Luke bids $9, Nicky wins & pays $10
2nd = If Nicky bids $10, David bids $8 but Luke bids $9, Nicky wins & pays $9.01 - think of eBay.
However, Project Bernanke unveiled Google was actually running a third-price auction. So if Nicky bids $10, David bids $8 but Luke bids $9, Nicky wins & pays $8 And this is where it gets murky…
In a real 2nd price auction, Nicky would pay $9.01 and the publisher would take $7.20 and Google takes 20% - $1.81.
Google would tell the publisher that the winning bid was $10 and pocket the $1 to put into a pool that would raise the bids to win out over advertisers using non-google tools.

As I said, very damning and this doesn’t even go into the Facebook & Google ‘secret deal’. However, two sides to every story, and both have fought back claiming the lawsuit is riddled with inaccuracies. Lawsuit with diagrams here - it’s a long read though…

Move out the way Zynga & Take-Two, here’s the real quiz. Microsoft agrees to buy Activision Blizzard for $70b. The lazy view is that they’re building something for the Metaverse, or maybe consolidating their position in an exploding market with gaming? Hmm, yep that seems more plausible.

A HUGE move from $MSFT as they agree to purchase one of the biggest game developers. Now, Microsoft will own such titles as Call of Duty, Overwatch, Candy Crush, World of Warcraft plus their portfolio of GitHub, Skype, Linkedin. Keep an eye out on other game studios this year…EA is up next.

Cool Stuff😎

“The future is decentralized! Oh two secs, Mastercard are calling…Why yes, we’d love to make NFTs available to all via consumers’ MasterCards.” An interesting announcement, as crypto platform Coinbase aims to make NFTs available to the masses

Can’t wait to purchase an Obnoxious Ape NFT and pay a card surcharge rather than crypto gas fees. I joke. A big step forward for this space and will be interesting to see how marketplaces like OpenSea respond.

What we’ve learned📚

In the blue corner, we have the undefeated champ of hit & miss predictions - Prof Galloway and in the red corner, it’s the decentralized maximalists Packy & Chris Dixon. A heavyweight clash of web3 views…

Prof G argues it’s a hazy term that promises decentralization but actually preys on the masses with a more centralized power for venture capitalists akin to the current middlemen this movement is fighting.
Packy counters that this debate is about whether or not web3, an internet owned by the users and builders, orchestrated with tokens, is net good or net bad for humanity

Whatever your thoughts on Web3 are, it’s great to see discourse between maximalists & minimalists - some might say that’s what’s best about the internet? A clear and open debate that does not troll and makes us all smarter from absorbing via these great minds. Intelligence is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

The Nerd Corner🤓

The Big swingers have arrived in the CDP space. Google and Amazon utilize market-leading cloud services to enter the MarTech wild west to enhance their tech stack and enforce their position

Get ready for many more chats on this one with buzzwords such as personalization, predictive marketing, and commerce as consumer privacy continues to be a focal point for Big Tech in 2022.