Randall Rothenberg, CEO y presidente de IAB
Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), said in his podcast that digital media’s openness is, at the same time, a blessing and a curse. “The Internet advertising industry sprung up based on the open Internet. That allowed anyone to start a media company and reach an audience. But it also allowed fraud, viruses, bad actors. The current trend to concentration of ad spending to the top players should be seen in that context” Rothenberg said. IAB’s CEO invited to look at the history of media. “There’s a tendency to consolidation. History has shown that government and technology can change in ways that will upend the dominance. It’s all a little bit hype driven and overblown” he said. For Rothenberg, publishers can compete against Google and Facebook. “People say that Google and Facebook are sucking up three-quarters of new digital ad spending, and publishers are left to fight over the scraps. The notion publishers can’t compete on data is ludicrous. Any given internet-based operation has equivalent amounts of data on its own audience on its own site. It’s the same as an independent magazine published in 1985, it could still compete with Time Inc, Hearst and Conde Nast.” The podcast ended with Rothenberg describing ad-block software developers as thieves.
