Why No One Is Paying Attention to You
Something Ezra Klein has often argued about politics is that modern political campaigns need a theory of attention. Baked into this argument is an important but little-understood supposition that also applies to adtech and martech: All marketing starts with attention, and if you cannot first orchestrate attention, everything you say is meaningless.
Attention should be your first priority. Because if it isn’t, you can implement all the tips and tricks of the LinkedIn School of B2B Marketing — value, not features; demand, not lead gen; Hubspot nonsense — and it won’t matter. If your prospects aren’t listening, you can’t use marketing to drive more pipeline.
Yet many adtech and martech companies operate as if this were not the case. They obsess over press releases no one will read, self-serving “I am pleased to announce” social posts that are completely out of step with the industry conversation, and PR “placements” in obscure publications. This is all on the wrong side of the 80/20 dynamic wherein 20% of your marketing activities drive 80% of the impact of your marketing program.
The impactful 20% lies in figuring out what people actually do care about and adding something controversial, counter-consensus, and/or novel to that discussion. Then, people will care about what you have to say (because you’re focusing on what your audience actually cares about, not what you wish they cared about). And then — when you have their attention — you earn the right to do some self-serving marketing (e.g. company announcements). And even those can still be articulated in a way that focuses on the industry/audience, not you.
I’ll boil down my theory of attention in adtech marketing to three steps:
Talk about the issues people care about
When you talk about yourself, tie it to the industry conversation
Put your contributions somewhere people will see them — and leverage voices people care about
Talk about the issues people care about
The hot topics of the day are as follows (forgive me if I’m forgetting one):
SPO (including the new, conceptually related topic of curation)
Ad verification / measurement (including brand safety, fraud, etc.)
Google, TTD, and competitive dynamics
AI
Privacy (including data collaboration)
CTV and, to a seemingly fading degree, commerce media
If you play in one of these sectors, your job is to challenge the consensus about these topics, ideally in a way that benefits you and disadvantages your competitors. I wrote last week about InfoSum doing this (I don’t work with them — just observing from afar) with an “anti-privacy washing” campaign.
CEO Lauren Wetzel argues, “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Data collaboration tech needs to be privacy by default. It needs to embrace PETs and ensure you never lose control. Doesn’t matter what regulation exists or doesn’t. This is beyond compliance. It is about doing right by consumers.”
I like this approach for four reasons:
InfoSum’s marketing approach is premised on the big picture. It’s not just about, say, the results InfoSum drives relative to competitors (which would be self-serving and myopic). It’s about the future of privacy-enhancing technologies, a major topic lots of people already care about. Anyone in the industry could feasibly take an interest in InfoSum’s content on this topic.
The anti-privacy washing campaign implicitly makes me wonder who is allegedly privacy washing. Obviously, Wetzel is throwing a jab at her competitors. I don’t immediately know if she’s right, but as a reader, I’m curious, and that’s the first step. InfoSum is starting the conversation they want us to have — or, as I like to say, defining their category in a way that advantages them and disadvantages their competitors.
The post drives urgency. InfoSum is a pure-play privacy challenger. If the incumbents are acceptable from a privacy standpoint, InfoSum’s solutions are not urgent. However, if the CEO can convince us that the status quo is unacceptable, InfoSum’s prospects need to take action and potentially consider switching from incumbents.
The distribution strategy is smart. The tweet is native to Twitter; it works perfectly well on its own. But it’s also a link to a video from a talk Wetzel gave at an event. This is modern marketing distribution: Do the event talk. I’m not against traditional PR or events. But also distribute that content on social in a way that feels native to the platform. Provide people value in the tweet itself; don’t just say, “Check out my talk” and drop a link.
All of this said, what happens if you don’t have the fortune of playing in a sector people already care about? You still have to talk about the issues people care about. You cannot simply talk about your little corner of the industry and expect people to care.
In order to orchestrate attention and give yourself a chance to reap the benefits of marketing (awareness, differentiation, urgency), you first need to weigh in on the topics du jour, ideally with a controversial, consensus-challenging, or original perspective. Only then, when you have people’s attention, can you make further progress by talking about yourself.
When you talk about yourself, don’t limit it to yourself
Every announcement is an opportunity to build your audience. If you’re a little company and you make the announcement entirely about you, no one will care. If you’re a big company, people will offer you courtesy likes and maybe even comments, but in making the post about you, you’ll have missed the opportunity to maximize the impact of marketing.
Consider this post by Integral Ad Science CEO Lisa Utzschneider:
The post could be a lot better in terms of both tone and content. Tonally, it is, like most company announcements, self-congratulatory. More importantly, the focus is on IAS and to some degree Meta — when it should be on advertisers, the future of brand safety on social platforms, and the consequences of the partnership for the rest of the industry.
By all means, IAS should announce its news. But it should immediately follow the news with a concise explanation as to why the partnership matters, how IAS’ approach to brand safety on social differs from that of competitors such as DV, and what the industry should expect from brand safety on social.
The urgency of doing more with these announcements — of making them more about the industry and less of a “we did a thing” communication — is apparent given the recent news that the DOJ is reportedly asking questions about DV and IAS. Every communication is an opportunity to show that you’re actually doing something of value, especially when it’s commonly believed that you don’t. Never waste the chance to define your category, differentiate, and drive urgency.
The who and where matter
Finally, if you want to reach people, you need to go where they are. Don’t overthink this. Leverage first-party communications channels where you can control the substance and cadence of your content. For the most part, that means LinkedIn and X/Twitter. Owned properties such as podcasts and newsletters are also good, though it takes time to build email and audio audiences, and they’re generally fed by social, so you may as well start with the latter. As in the InfoSum example, events are still influential, as is the press, but social is the cornerstone of modern communications.
Who the evangelist is also matters. Generally speaking, people view the CEO as the primary spokesperson of the company. So, in my view, the CEO should embrace that influence and see part of their role as chief evangelist. Of course, there are exceptions. Jud Spencer at TTD and, recently, Eric Tilbury at Inuvo come to mind. But if you’re looking to maximize impact, get the head honcho involved.
In short, you can’t accomplish anything in marketing without attention. So, offer an original perspective on the issue of the day, focus on the audience and what your contributions mean for them even in ostensibly self-serving announcements, and go where the people are. Ninety percent of adtech companies would improve the impact of their marketing if they followed those three steps.
