The obituaries are being written for the Open Web left and right. The question is, who or what can save digital advertising on the 'long tail’ - or if AI is about to make it all worthless.

As Ari Paparo of Marketecture put it recently, the open web is "in a sorry state." He shares a number of reasons for the decline, including the growth of crappy made-for-advertising sites and the lack of quality ad data. And that's before cookies go away!

Ok, so what about all those new digital IDs that were supposed to both provide a solid replacement, and maybe even improve, targeting? Well, according to AdExchanger, they have little scale, and barely any brands are using them.

Alright, well what about retail media, and its quest to bring its powerful shopping data to the open web? Well, per the newsletter Media, Ads + Commerce, "dollars are beginning to accelerate into off-site retail media advertising" but brands need to temper their expectations. Shopping ads just aren't likely to work as well when they're not on shopping sites.

Meanwhile, this could all be for naught, as Google is starting to really push AI-drive 'answers' in its search results, which is likely to seriously dent traffic for many publishers. Brian Morrissey of the Rebooting said on his podcast that most publishers he speaks with expect to be in an entirely different business in a few years.

Sounds bleak.

Except, perhaps there's hope in the early results of an AI-driven web - it sucks.

Dig Deeper With These Links:

• Did it have to be this way? - Ari Paparo [Marketecture]

• Alternative IDs Hold Promise, But Lack Scale - Alyssa Boyle [AdExchanger]

• Are Brands Optimizing to the Wrong Metrics with Off-Site Retail Media? - Andrew Lipsman [Media, Ads +Commerce]

• The Depth Era - [The Rebooting show]

• Google promised a better search experience — now it’s telling us to put glue on our pizza - Kylie Robison [The Verge]

• Charlie Warzel [The Atlantic], on X