Flip the switch

Towards controlled and paid advertising

In 2051, surnames no longer look like they used to. They’ve been extended with a domain name, for both practical and legal reasons, depending on your technological religion – for example Ella Ferguson-Linux or Michele Roger-Linux. For a while, the ‘Big Four’ were Microsoft, iCloud, Google and Harmony (the former Huawei) but Linux has emerged as the counter-culture – promoting a more ethical use of data and more control on advertising on all connected devices.

So much has happened on that front since the end of the 2020s. In 2027, the giants Facebook, Google and Apple were finally taken to court on charges of anti-trust. This resonated worldwide. Connected populations around the world had known that it was just a matter of time before such a trial would take place. With connected devices having taken such a huge place in everyone’s lives and given the huge quantity of data these entities could access and trade to other companies and brands, authorities had to act. Facebook, Google and Apple were also forced to give up a seat on their board of directors to Chief Ethics & Data Officers, which became the highest paid civil servants in Europe. In 2028, Facebook was dismantled and replaced by VeroK, the result of VK's takeover of the Vero social network. Since then, Baidu has remained the only brand that survived the last 40 years. And for good reason: China has withdrawn from international technology regulation entities.

That was the last straw, after the excitement around the hyperconnectivity enabled by 5G in 2023. Since then, each new connected device purchased, triggered an exponential growth of unsolicited commercial invitations. As the term 'offline' faded away and as digital advertising became the norm, any pretext and any device was seen as an opportunity to reach potential consumers. Watches, glasses, dashboards, right down to the toilet mirror; it became almost impossible to escape without leaving the grid.

In 2029, the European Commission started to take the problem seriously as it was escalating to the point of calling into question the ethics of the entire advertising industry. The issue was explosive. European Commission employees in the data privacy department were receiving tens of thousands of complaints every day about the abuse of notifications or the lack of respect for privacy. It wasn’t an easy fight. But technology companies were, in the end, forced to adopt a European standard for processing personal data for advertising purposes.

European law started with limiting the number of attempted solicitations by brands. Each citizen could only be targeted once in every 48 hours by a given brand. Beyond that, the penalty was clear: blocking the merchant's identifier for twelve months, unless the end user decided otherwise (unblocking from their European identification application). And soon, after a few impressive protests in the US, the law was also implemented in North America.

This outcry became an opportunity for brands, who redoubled their creativity. Artificial intelligence very quickly managed to shuffle its data silos and find the right moments to reach consumers. The introduction of AI to read human emotions greatly contributed to more timely targeting. This caused protests in the former European southern bloc (Italy-Spain-France-Portugal) which lasted several months.

2035 was an important milestone worldwide. After eight years of negotiations, the UN passed a new international law on data management. Moving forward, brands were forced to pay citizens, wherever they were in the world, for using their personal data. The amount was, not surprisingly, low for generic data. But the highly regulated management of health data sometimes generated more impressive transactions, and often got media attention.

For example, the Mountain View biotech company 23AndMe sold data for a record-breaking 14 billion euros in 2030. Nearly 20 years of Google research associated with the DNA sequences of millions of users (Americans, Africans and Europeans) went to an insurance company in order to refine an AI capable of anticipating disease. The data, of course, had to be anonymised before processing.

In 2042, DNA data was sold on a voluntary and individual basis to private research institutes for about 10 crypto-euros (or a thousand ‘old’ euros). The Verok network history could sometimes fetch up to one crypto-euro per year for people engaged in paid daily status programmes. As for Amazon Wish lists, their selling price dropped to 0.001 crypto-euro after tens of millions of lists were published online by North Korean hackers. Today, official valuations have put an end to the speculation, despite a fierce reluctance from banking institutions. And for good reason: their scalping algorithms were happily taking advantage of the soaring price of data, especially in Africa.

With the law forcing companies to become greener and more ethical, in line with environmental objectives, some were able to use the European Union's seal of approval in their communications. This label allowed them to communicate once a semester with consumers in their electronic mailboxes, thanks to a certification in the blockchain. Few abuses have been observed in Europe. Even China quickly adopted open-source technology to create the ‘Great Wall of Brands’ in 2042 – the only ones allowed to communicate with its citizens.

With GDPR version 5.0 scheduled for 1 January 2052, the Indo-European Union is once again pioneering data privacy by offering a strict framework for paid communications between citizens, wherever they may be on the planet, as well as companies with compliance certificates. The Americas (the merger of the United States, Canada and Central America) should adopt the same legislation in 2055, adding their various geographical bases on planets where official recognition has been ratified by the UN and where tourism is permitted to populations vaccinated against Covid-50.

Data price: the next big speculation?

Advertising messages haven’t been aimed at the masses for a long time. Even without looming privacy limitations, a shift is already taking place towards emotional connection and a bigger focus on consumer psychology. Algorithms will have to become more and more adept at seducing the narrative through emotion. A lack of access to personal data could also sound the death knell for traditional, creative advertising agencies, as they’ll no longer have access to data that allows them to reach consumers with sufficient precision to be profitable. Without personalised data at their fingertips, without vanity metrics like views, impressions and clicks, marketers will have to come up with many more niche campaigns to appeal to a broad market set.

Ethical and ecological concerns will soon cease to divide Western societies. They will become widely adopted, particularly under pressure from consumers who are concerned about both the environment and the life cycle of the products they buy. Credible green claims will win customers over.

The idea of a mature Chinese operating system like HarmonyOS could boost a market where Google and Apple have held a comfortable duopoly for the past decade, and after the failures of Microsoft, Palm andBlackBerry (plus, more anecdotally, Corel). If the project attracts other manufacturers, Huawei could succeed in building Western consumer confidence in Chinese Clouds in the global battle for data.

According to a study, the global data monetisation market is expected to be worth $370.969 million by 2023. Consumers will undoubtedly understand the value of their personal data and monetise its use. Governments will then have to take measures to regulate these transactions.

This will also apply to the post-digital transformation of advertising, as it feeds on data to appeal to users. The opening of an investigation against Google by the European Commission in June 2021 is only the beginning of a campaign against the use of personal data for advertising targeting by certain technology companies, initiated in particular by more ethical players (Vivaldi, Duckduckgo, Mailfence, Tutanota).

Let's end on an anecdotal note. In England and Wales alone, almost 200 000 surnames have disappeared in the last 115 years, according to the Daily Mail. The reason? Probably since when two people marry, one takes the partner’s name. Fast forward another thirty years, and we may well run out of surnames. Since technology will define and own our identities, who knows, maybe people will incorporate their chosen operating system in their last names. Tim Cook-iCloud? Ella Ferguson-Linux? Who will you be?

Hyperconnectivity is nothing new, even in 2021. With the surge in connected devices, imagining a world where brands can reach you anywhere and anytime with advertising, even in your toilets, doesn’t seem far-fetched. It’s already the case when you’re scrolling down your Instagram feed. With all the possibilities that connected devices will bring, new laws will most likely have to be established to frame advertising. Otherwise, it’s easy to imagine how intrusive it could become when you receive endless notifications for products or services which don’t interest you. As a result, marketing will be more interesting and beneficial to everyone, and we’ll return to true creativity based on data.

However, whether the Facebook empire will be dismantled by 2051 remains to be seen, as we still base a huge part of our lives on it. It might evolve into a more ethical version but vanishing completely is, for now, difficult to imagine.