Web2 seemed to be exciting but was it?
Well, it let us become close participants of the Web without having technical knowledge.
It resulted in big players like Google, Facebook, OpenX, AppNexus conquering the virtual space, as the knowledge of technologies adoption was behind.
So we went from decentralization to centralization running into famous Web2 issues such as data loss, privacy and of course, fraud.
The advertising market got oversaturated with various tech solutions that were mostly aimed at measurement and optimization of customer experience.
They are all different but in the eyes of users and businesses, they are all the same and confusing. Actually, they were an extra layer on top of the ready-to-go solutions rather than standalone technologies that would solve the transparency problem and improve the customer experience.
Web2 has become a great playground for testing and spending money.
We got dynamic, interactive, video, audio ads available in multiple environments. The era when we adopted mobile phones, created applications and connected TV to the Internet.
Fun fact, the first time TV connected to the Internet was 20 years ago when it became more popular as an advertising tool only in 2020.
In the end, advertising is all about signals, data processing and passing. The protocols have evolved during Web2 so we could integrate into the ecosystem in a more standard way.
VAST protocol firstly emerged in 2008 followed by OpenRTB in 2010. The rise of OpenRTB came only in 2016, which is another great example of the timeline between tech release and its adoption.
However, again due to the lack of knowledge, the industry became messy and full of custom solutions that didn't pursue the right values in the core.
2021: we got to the boom of blockchain, crypto and NFTs, the mind switch happened.
Some people thought that Web3 would be the Web of AI or the Web of VR. However, it is both and we seem to go back to decentralization roots.
We are on the way to building a peer-to-peer ecosystem adding transparency in connections.
It’s definitely a time to create the Internet of value, trust, security and privacy with the use of best practices.
Decentralization and creating own ecosystem are the keys along with cooperation to standardize the protocols of passing the data.