Sincere apologies to Mo Willems.
Disclaimer: this book review should not be misconstrued as asserting any opinion as to the facts or merits of any past or ongoing lawsuits involving Google or my work there. Any lawyers reading this, for the love of the deity of your choice, please cut me some slack.
I’m in a book! My former colleague Ari Paparo’s book Yield: How Google Bought, Built, and Bullied Its Way to Advertising Dominance came out yesterday. I am mentioned in Yield a lot, since I led product management of the ad tech products at the heart of the DOJ’s antitrust case against Google. I am glad to report that Ari does just about the best possible job of telling an essential story about the back-office of the Internet. You should read it, even if you don’t know your DSP from your RTB.
While websites were transforming our lives in the 2000s, the business of advertising went through an equally huge and disruptive shift. The old model of selling advertising with handshake deals crumbled in the face of massive, real-time auction systems that work more like the stock market. Fortunes were made and lost as Google came out on top, largely at the cost of print media empires and the first generation of online leaders like Yahoo!, AOL, and MSN.
Lawsuits followed. In April, Google lost a major DOJ lawsuit alleging antitrust violations in the ads market. Ironically, this might all be moot, as mobile apps and streaming video have become the focus of online advertising, leaving the Web as a bit of a backwater.
Ari succeeds at making this epic tale intelligible to the non-technical reader, starting with a useful glossary and timeline. His writing style is conversational but clear, walking patiently through a maze of technical terms like real-time bidding, demand-side platforms, and second-price versus first-price auctions.
He’s also wickedly funny. Ari sums up yield management as “the dirty business of managing the ads on publisher websites to squeeze every penny out of the content and hopefully pay the journalism bills.” In explaining how ads compete with each other, he notes “Like the nine circles of hell in Dante’s Inferno, the publisher ad server had developed with distinct strata, defined in sixteen levels of priorities.”
This is a story about people and personalities as much as technology, and Ari brings the cast vividly to life. My wife agrees that he describes me accurately as “a large, loud, and opinionated person” who does a spot-on impression of former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Brian O’Kelley, a major industry player as founder of the independent ad tech company AppNexus, “gives off the contradictory air of both not giving a shit and being willing to do anything to win.”
Ari’s reporting is thorough and probing. I’ve had my memories of this era forcibly extruded over endless prep sessions with a parade of lawyers, culminating in 21 hours of depositions and testifying on the stand in Virginia. Ari’s versions are fairly accurate to my recollections, and his stories of other parts of the industry ring true to me.
I especially appreciated that Ari goes beyond reportage to spend the last two chapters talking about how things could have been different, and what possible remedies might mean for Google and the online publishing industry. He is clear-eyed that whatever you think about the outcome of the antitrust trial, the problems web publishers face today can’t be blamed solely on one company. “Web advertising works, but in many ways was never a great business… Consumers also voted with their feet (really their eyeballs). Social apps have directly siphoned away time and attention from news and journalism websites because consumers simply use those apps more.”
My only reservation is that Ari erases himself from the story. Unless you read his author bio, you wouldn’t know that he was in the middle of most of it. He was a member of the DoubleClick leadership team, worked at Google through the transition, led product at AppNexus for 18 months, and co-founded a successful ad tech company, Beeswax, which was purchased by Comcast’s Freewheel unit in late 2020. The effect is reminiscent of reading a Daily Planet article where Clark Kent interviews Superman.
What’s next, and a belated apology.
Even though I left the ad tech world almost seven years ago, reading Yield brought back emotions and opinions that I feel are still relevant. I’m going to spend some upcoming issues of this newsletter connecting my past with the current state of the Internet, touching on both Google and online publishers. Hopefully you’ll all be tolerant of the August field trip from my usual focus on social media and democracy.
Finally, an apology. I am grateful that Ari writes “Jonathan is at heart a publisher guy, and by all accounts he really cared about the well-being of his customers.” This is 100% true. In fact, my favorite customers were always my harshest critics, because they taught me what I didn’t know and challenged me (and the whole publisher platform team) to do better.
So I was dismayed to read that Stephanie Layser, then at Newscorp, and later a major Google critic, asked to meet with me after a disastrous product update meeting, but was refused. I don’t recall this at all, and the timing in the book seems a bit off (the anecdote is from April 2019, after I left the Ads team in December 2018). Nonetheless, for the record – Stephanie, I am sorry. You have my unconditional apology. It would probably horrify the lawyers, but if you ever want to talk, even at this late date, I’d be happy to reconnect. Once a publisher guy, always a publisher guy.
Ideas? Feedback? Criticism? I want to hear it, because I am sure that I am going to get a lot of things wrong along the way. I will share what I learn with the community as we go. Reach out any time at [email protected].
