Was Gary Vee right?

mlns='> Do marketers ruin everything? Maybe – if they’re on autopilot [View Message in Browser]( / [Add Us to Safe Sender List]( Weekly News 7.7.23 Connect With CMI  [23+ Content Marketing Skills You Need for Today and the Next Five Years]( Ready to improve your skills for short- and long-term content marketing success but not sure which ones to focus on? Almost two dozen Content Marketing World presenters offer advice with unique twists, unexpected advice, and helpful reminders. [Read more]( By Jodi Harris More of the week's best stories: - [Audiences Don't Care If AI Created Your Brand's Content]( Ann Gynn - [Beware: Automated AI-Generated Content Can Ruin Everything for Marketers]( Content Marketing Institute Team - [ICYMI: Why You Should Hit Pause on Content Tech (Yes, Even AI) Until You Answer This]( Robert Rose - [ICYMI2: How To Reinvent Your Content Discovery Strategy in the Age of AI]( Ahava Leibtag  Was Gary Vee right? “Marketers ruin everything.” Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk made that saying famous in a 2013 speech. Ever since, people have trotted the saying out whenever they see marketers exploiting innovative technologies or experiences to sell more products. I find the phrase unfortunately apt regarding programmatic advertising. Programmatic advertising – or programmatic media buying – uses technology to automate the purchase and display of ads on digital real estate. The term describes a spectrum of ad tech that covers everything from real-time bidding (where ad inventory prices are decided through automated auctions) to targeting based on content consumption. Much of the action takes place through intermediary marketplaces. There’s no relationship between the ad buyer (the marketer) and the publisher who will display the ad to its audience. Everything is automated. Today, programmatic ads get served on almost all major publishers and in social media. Programmatic ads offer marketers ease of purchase, scale, and reach. So what’s my problem with them? The tradeoffs to those gains are the sacrifices in creative quality, safety, and audience insight. If you believe the context of the content your ad is adjacent to is important – then programmatic is a challenge. Your ad can – and almost certainly will eventually – appear next to inappropriate content within the ad network you select. Then there are the technical challenges. In 2022, media company [Gannett revealed]( it had served ads to the wrong newspapers for nine months. That wasn’t just a small glitch in the algorithm – that amounted to billions of ads served to the wrong audiences. And I haven’t even started to talk about the problems with bot traffic. Last week NewsGuard, which rates the credibility of news and information websites to track online misinformation, [released a report]( that found large, reputable brands are unintentionally supporting what it calls unreliable artificial intelligence-generated news sites (UAINs). According to the report, more than 140 brands are feeding programmatic advertising dollars into such content farms. Whether those sites (and the diversion of ad dollars) will disrupt established news networks remains to be seen. But if you think this situation has no analogy in content marketing, stop right there. AI-generated blogs, content hubs, and automatically generated FAQs for your industry are coming for your search traffic. And one day, they may start telling your stories. I explain more about all this (and the fight ahead of us) in the latest CMI News video and article. Let me know your ideas in the [article’s comments section]( or [an email](mailto:robert@contentadvisory.net?subject=Weekly%20newsletter%20–%20programmatic%20advertising) . I’d love to hear from you. It’s your story. Tell it well. Until then, remember: It's your story. Tell it well. Robert Rose Chief Strategy Advisor Content Marketing Institute Would any of your colleagues or friends benefit from Robert's weekly updates? Please invite them to [subscribe]( here.   More From CMI Last Chance to Save on Content Marketing World Time is running out! Early bird pricing for Content Marketing World 2023 is set to expire next Friday, July 14 – don’t miss your chance to learn and save! Join us September 26-28, in Washington, D.C., for an experience packed with inspiring insights, actionable advice, and new connections. [Register now and save »](   Free Webinar Next Week Join us next Thursday, July 13, as we explore the benefits of using AI in content creation, best practices for integrating AI into your SEO and content marketing strategy, and how to create high-quality, search-optimized content with AI. A must-attend for marketers who want to stay ahead of the competition and improve their SEO through AI-generated content! [Register now »](  [SEO RESOURCES]( Events [Content Marketing World]( [ContentTECH Summit]( [Content Marketing Awards]( Resources [Research]( [White Paper/eBook Library]( [Content Voices]( Education [Content Marketing University]( [Chief Content Officer]( [Webinars]( [Job Listings]( Interested in advertising with CMI? 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