How Silicon Valley stole Madison Avenue’s thunder.

By Gonzalo López Martí   –    LMMIAMI.COM

• In the 1860s, when the gold rush took place in, of all places, San Francisco the only folks who really made money were the opportunists selling picks and shovels to the myriad wannabe miners flocking to the Bay Area.
• Or so the cliché goes.
• In 2015’s Silicon Valley retaining a good PR team is as important -or more- than employing the best engineers.
• Cuz, let’s face it, attracting investors is, more often than not, all about the hype.
• The pixie dust.
• C’mon.
• That’s our game, folks.
• Nobody does spin better then us ad people.
• Supposibly in theory, at least.
• So why are they besting us?
• Why are they getting all the attention and all the funding?
• “They” meaning those Silicon Valley post pubescent geeks.
• As we pointed out last week, only a minor percentage of digital startups turn a profit.
• Some conspiracy theorists believe Silicon Valley would not exist were it not nursed, stewarded and protected by America’s military industrial complex.
• Who knows.
• Or maybe the answer is simply that they are stealing the ad business’ thunder because they ARE the new ad business.
• By this train of thought Silicon Valley IS the new Madison Avenue.
• A mutation so radical and tectonic that we failed to notice it altogether.
• See, Silicon Valley has mastered the high art of “turning bugs into features”.
• Turning a bug –or glitch- into a feature is an expression from the programming vernacular.
• It describes a situation in which a coding flaw is cunningly presented as a deliberate functionality by design.
• Sort of “polishing a txrd” or “turning one man’s junk into another one’s antique”.
• Silicon Valley’s bug-cum-feature is the fact that their entire house of cards is built atop the good ol’ business of selling ads.
• Albeit taken to an extreme.
• What’s new about it then?
• Yeah, to some extent they have streamlined and mechanized the process.
• Still, other than barter, selling ads is the oldest business model known to man.
• And woman.
• The ultimate freeloadin’ scheme.
• The same logic that gave us radio and TV.
• A better mousetrap (pardon the cliché) with the addition of faster diminishing returns.
• Thanks to them Silicon Valley folks, now there there are billions of people roaming the planet who think that the web and everything on it is God’s gift to the human race.
• Thanks to these brainiacs there are billions of earthlings who vocally believe that everything online is or should be free of charge (news, education, entertainment, information, history, science, music, films).
• The Homo Freeloaderus.
• A stingy creature who even has the gall to complain when advertising gets in the way (ad blocking anyone?).
• Silicon Valley has painted us all into one crowded corner.
• Only Netflix has gotten away with charging a subscription (which is, in essence, cable TV over IP).
• I’ve heard highly articulate & educated people complain about “intrusive advertising” in the digital space.
• Matter of factly, with a straight face.
• Dude, when was the last time you paid a subscription, fee or canon to occupy Facebook’s server’s with your silly selfies and your child’s birthday pictures?
• What makes you think that Mark Zuckerberg is some kind of selfless philanthropist?
• He’s so full of himself that he just announced he’ll take tow months paternity leave.
• To add insult to injury, Silicon Valley wunderkinds are now dating Victoria Secret models (e.g; Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel & top model Miranda Kerr).
• Not sure these are a good sign.
• When scrawny geeks take protracted paternity leaves or start dating above their weight it might just be sign of pre bubble burst exuberance.
• Everything has changed only to remain the same.
• The big winners are the usual suspects, the good old gatekeepers, the folks selling the picks and shovels: namely AT&T, Apple and, to some extent, Verizon.