Northside Festival

The internet doesn’t understand the advertising business. Then again, neither do most advertisers.

After nearly 10 years of research and reading more than 150 economic works on the topic of advertising, as well as running his own agencies, Rick Webb believes that every value proposition of advertising has been severely degraded in the digital age. We’ve thrown out the social contract that made advertising moral, as more and more advertising money is spent on platforms rather than supporting news gathering. We’ve always had some version of this — advertising didn’t support just the news, but also Howdy Doody. As the news that once justified advertising is taking a smaller and smaller share of  ad dollars, the math has completely changed, and the industries involved — tech, advertising, and media — haven’t come to terms with it.

Join Rick Webb and media vet Elizabeth Spiers for this dive into the problems facing the "hidden persuaders" of the web, and how we better understand the ideas and values that can fix it.