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Twenty-five years ago, Google unveiled Adwords, which pledged to enable advertisers to quickly design a flexible program that best fits [their] online marketing goals and budget, Google cofounder Larry Page said at the time. The principle was simple. AdWords allowed advertisers to purchase individualized, affordable keyword-based advertising that appears alongside search results used by hundreds of millions of people every day. That decision was a game changer for Google. Advertising now accounts for around three in every four dollars of revenue the company has made so far this year, growing 10% in the last year alone. The product, since renamed Google Ads, has powered the company to prosperity, cementing its position at the top of the search space. But a quarter of a century on, artificial intelligence could force an overhaul of Google Ads. The shift from traditional search to AI answer engines represents the greatest challenge to Google’s $200 billion monetization engine we’ve ever seen, says Aengus Boyle, vice president of media at VaynerMedia, a strategy and creative agency set up by entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk. Thats not because competitors are siphoning away users from Google: The companys global daily active users are up 13% year on year, with nearly 2 billion people logging on to Google services every day, according to Bank of America estimates. But because Google is starting to layer in AI-tailored answers into the front page of its search resultsoften above the advertisements and blue links to sources that helped make its name over the last 25 yearsits ability to bring in ad revenue could take a serious hit. If AI answers start replacing traditional Google searches, thats a real threat to the whole cash engine, says Fergal O’Connor, CEO of Buymedia, an ad platform company. Google makes most of its money from ads tied to clicks. The more queries, the more ad space, the more revenue. The problem is that AI summaries of search results make it less necessary to click through to websites. So far, thats been to the consternation of website owners, who rely on visits to their websites in order to sustain their business models. In time, it could harm Google itself. If people stop clicking through to sites because they get what they need from an AI summary, that entire model takes a hit, OConnor says. Of course, Google will obviously try to wedge ads into the AI answers, notes OConnorand indeed, the company is already doing sobut he says its not a like-for-like comparison. One generative answer replaces a full results page of ad inventory, so its fewer impressions, fewer clicks, and less data flowing through the system, he explains. However, if anyone is best placed to capitalize on those changes, its Google, Boyle predicts. Their clearest advantage lies within Google Adswhich has allowed them to integrate ads into new AI discovery surfaces, like AI Overviews and AI Mode, faster than any of their competitors in the space, he says. OConnor believes that Google will adapt to the new norm, with AI being alteringbut not terminalto the future of advertising. If people genuinely stop Googling and start asking, the whole search economy has to reinvent itself, OConnor says. But if you’ve been around the digital ad space for a few decades, you’ll know that we’ve survived a few events that were billed as being apocalyptic to the industry. Google has had 25 years to understand how best to target and present ads to its users and to squeeze out everything it can from the ad industry. Its best placed to secure another 25 years of dominance, even if it requires some changes.
Category:
E-Commerce
Insincerity is the mother of deceit. Whenever we say something we don’t mean, we tell a lie. It may be a small misrepresentation, but its still a lie as we are being dishonest to hide what we truly think and feel. Repeated insincerity breaks down trust, communication, and understanding. So why do organizations, often without even knowing it, encourage insincerity in their employees? The answer lies a little with social media and a lot in narcissism. NARCISSISTS, NARCISSISTS, EVERYWHERE Since the early 1980s, psychologists have been tracking a steady rise in narcissism: a growing self-consciousness and preoccupation with our image and what other people say about us. The exact cause remains unclear. Changes in parenting styles, increasing individualism, and a cultural obsession with self-esteem have all been blamed. Social media has accelerated the trend, but the rise started well before the likes of Facebook arrived, with one large study of college students finding a 30% increase in levels of narcissism in the 25 years leading up to Facebooks launch. Whatever the cause, the effect has been widespread. People have grown more sensitive to how others view them. You can see it in how people curate a personal brand on Instagram and a professional one on LinkedIn. Cancel culture and political leaders appearing to prize loyalty over competence have hammered home the message: Be careful what you say and do or risk the consequences. Even if it isnt top of mind, the pressure sits in our culture and shapes our behavior. ORGANIZATIONS, TOO And its not just individuals that are becoming more narcissistic, but organizations, too. Because around the same time as psychologists started tracking rises in individual narcissism, they also identified what has come to be called organizational narcissism. Firms increasingly seek visible loyalty from their employees, and emphasize the importance of everyone being aligned and on the same page. As with individuals, organizations have always focused on image to some degree, but evidence suggests they are doing so more than ever before. Broad social forces play a role. Leaders, like individuals, now obsess over reputation. Social media and cancel culture have forced firms to guard their online image. With any message able to spread globally in seconds, firms understandably try to control what employees say about them. Some positive factors, such as organizations investing more in motivating and communicating with employees feed into this. But less positive factors matter to. If todays CEOs are more narcissistic or image-conscious than they were 30 years ago, then they may create a culture in which perceived disloyalty is less tolerated. All this drives organizations to demand affirmation and alignment from employees. What started as a growing awareness of brand image and employee motivation has often morphed into a preoccupation with positivity and controlling what gets said. Even when firms don’t demand this, because individuals have become more image-conscious, employees may nonetheless perceive organizations as requiring these things. An environment in which everyone is positive about a firm can be a good thing. But it is too easy for it to tip to become toxic for individuals and dangerous for the organization. SIGNS AND SOLUTIONS The warning signs of organizational narcissism resemble the symptoms found in individual narcissism. A preoccupation with image and what people say, punishing perceived disloyalty or noncompliance, and reacting negatively to questioning. What matters most is not whether firms behave this way, but whether employees believe they do. The consequences are always damaging. Just as with individuals, organisational narcissism erodes trust, communication, and understanding. Studies show that trying too hard to create a culture of positivity can undermine information flow and decision-making, making them blind to their weaknesses. Some argue that organizational narcissism is an inevitable consequence of a capitalist-driven need to succeed against all competition. They may be correct to some degree. But not entirely. Firms can avoid a slide into overdone loyalty and positivity. The writer Somerset Maugham once said, “What we call insincerity is often just a method by which we can avoid an unpleasantness.” By “unpleasantness” he meant a disagreement. And that disagreement is exactly what breaks insincerity. Leaders and organizations, must actively seeking out, encourage, and reward debate and questioning. They must step back from a preoccupation with whether internal communications make leaders look authentic and inspiring. Instead, they should focus on whether they enable employees to be authentic and inspiring themselves. Because there’s only one thing worse than a negative and disgruntled employee, and that’s an insincere one.
Category:
E-Commerce
The Washington, D.C., architectural firm that President Donald Trump tapped to design his White House ballroom is known for its ornamental, classical architecture, but the firm’s work is not generally known, even by design aficionados. Crews are now demolishing the entirety of the East Wing for an expansive, $250 million new space designed by McCrery Architects, which compared to the detailed, hi-fi portfolios of today’s most prominent architectural firms, has a strikingly light online footprint. The firm’s site shows only contact information for new commission inquiries and a slideshow of work that includes artist renderings of the planned ballroom. There’s no longer a list of its projects, but an archived list reveals a CV that leans ecclesiastical. Its Instagram account is bare. “Committed to Tradition and Excellence,” its bio reads, but there are no posts. The firms portfolio is heavy on churches, and it’s now fast building up public-sector work, driven by a love of classical American architecture. “The very best American architecture is classical architecture once made American,” James McCrery, the firms founder and principal, said last year during a talk at the conservative Hillsdale College. “Americans love classical architecture because it is our nation’s formative architecture and we love our nation’s formation.” Here are some of the firms most notable projects, as its work on one of the most iconic buildings in the U.S. gets underway. Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Knoxville, Tennessee [Photo: Nheyob/Wiki Commons] Ecclesiastical architecture Catholic churches are the most common building type in the firm’s portfolio. McCrery Architects has designed several houses of worship, including the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in Knoxville, Tennessee; Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral in Raleigh, North Carolina; and Our Lady of the Mountains in Highlands, North Carolina. St. Mary Help of Christians, Aiken, South Carolina [Photo: Jude.anthony1972/Wiki Commons] The firm’s design for St. Mary Help of Christians in Aiken, South Carolina, won the John Russell Pope Award in 2017 for the traditional architecture contest’s Ecclesiastical Design over 3,000 square feet category. In a 2015 reflection about the building, McCrery said the church was “designed to encourage and strengthen all in the Faith . . . [and] intentionally made to be beautiful,” which typifies his and his firm’s approach to design. This year, McCrery Architects was awarded for the baptismal font at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Gloversville, New York. Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral, Raleigh, North Carolina [Photo: Farragutful/Wiki Commons] McCrery’s work in academia McCrery Architects designed the University Saint Mary of the Lake Feehan Memorial Library in Mundelein, Illinois, and the Saint Thomas Aquinas Chapel at the University of Nebraskas Saint John Newman Center in Lincoln. Public-sector work The firm’s government work has grown from designing a statue pedestal and gift shop to making one of the biggest changes to the most famous federal government building in the U.S. Here are the details. [Photo: Architect of the Capitol] McCrery designed the pedestal for California’s statue of Ronald Reagan for the National Statuary Hall Collection in 2009. Each state can send two statues to the collection at the U.S. Capitol, and McCrery made the Tennessee Rose marble pedestal for artist Chas Fagan’s statue of the late president and former California governor and actor. The pedestal includes concrete pieces from the Berlin Wall. McCrery’s firm also designed the U.S. Supreme Court’s book and gift shop, and, according to the Catholic University of America, the North Carolina state legislature commissioned the firm to create a master plan for its historic State Capitol Grounds. The White House ballroom The firm’s White House project is now its most visible workand it’s most controversial. [Rendering: whitehouse.gov/McCrery Architects] The sudden demolition to make room for a privately funded addition shocked at least one former White House resident, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation asked the Trump administration and National Park Service to pause until plans can go through the legally required public review processes that it says include consultations, reviews, and public comment. [Rendering: whitehouse.gov/McCrery Architects] Trump’s White House makeover parallels his attempts at expanding presidential and state power, and represents an outward, physical manifestation of a wider Trump project to remake the presidency and leave a mark in his second term. Like using emergency economic powers to impose tariffs or sending National Guard troops into U.S. cities, Trump’s power plays today feel anything but precedented or traditional. Traditional, though, is exactly what the architect who designed his grand ballroom is trained in.
Category:
E-Commerce
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