Whilst pubX is clearly pushing the PubTech agenda as a leading developer of Modular Publisher Technology, the skills and experience needed to thrive in this sub-sector closely match that of its parent, AdTech.
However, we believe that technology developed specifically for Publishers is a critical part of this ecosystem which has been historically lacking, meaning that the industry is sleepwalking towards the death of the Open Web.
So the main reason to work in PubTech would be this: to preserve the Open Web for future generations, and to prevent the internet from being a series of Walled Gardens owned by a handful of billionaires.
The Open Web, or the Ad-funded internet, is a broad church, with over 1.1 billion websites, millions of which have achieved the scale to be ad-funded. No doubt there are many sites which don’t contribute massively to the development of the human species (another Solitaire site, anyone?), but the Open Web also counts amongst its members almost every Newspaper in the world, a huge amount of content geared towards entertainment, advice, and education, and so on - it used to be synonymous with the internet, but as Social Media firms scaled, they carved out an increasing amount of attention for themselves, creating closed loop advertising ecosystems around themselves that siphon potential revenue away from the Open Web.
There is absolutely no doubt that Social Media has been a valuable part of any marketing mix, and that the ease of spend is highly compelling, however with Meta’s recent announcement that it will nix investment in fact-checking, and the ongoing saga(s) around election interference, not to mention the negative impact on mental health, it is clear that Social Media walled gardens are a long way from a panacea for advertisers and users alike.
The risk though is that this grand awakening and discovery will come too late, and due to a lack of investment in technology in the Open Web, when users and brands turn away from Social Media in droves, there will be nowhere else to go.
So this is the main reason to work in PubTech, as well as the originating belief for those that do: the Open Web is too important to lose.
But this is taking a view from today based on relatively little exposure to the internet against the historical record - really, humans have had commercial internet for around 30 years. We have had the telephone for 150 years, and that has morphed from transformative technology, to underlying infrastructure, to something that young people today would find unrecognisable. So we must then imagine what happens to the internet of the future, if it is not protected today? Do we as a species want the future of the internet designed by so few people, or do we want it to be this swirling vortex of global creativity, ingesting all of humanity's endeavours and morphing ever forward as the very best of us?
This dynamic has played out countless times in Hollywood because the trope is very real: imagine a Metaverse that is in the vision of ‘Zuck’, versus one that is created by all of us. The Open Web is the closest thing we have to Internet Democracy, and if we don’t preserve this now, we will regret it in the future.
So this is the main reason to work in PubTech - because you are an optimist. Because you believe that you can contribute to creating a better future for the internet than that which it seems destined for currently, and because you wish to rise above the day-to-day issues of monetization, and create something of lasting value.
So often in AdTech do we focus on daily performance, quarterly results, and yearly strategies. In PubTech, we f ocus on the future.
Andrew Mole, CEO and Co-Founder at pubX