As an optimistic college freshman in 2000 (dating myself, I know), I had the privilege of taking a class where once a week, a successful business entrepreneur would come in and expand our minds about a company/product/vision they had created.
Being the height of dot com frenzy, I still remember one class where a guy described how the Internet offered the potential to revolutionize advertising in a way that would be a win-win for everyone. He described a world where ads might even be enjoyable to watch because of the Internet’s potential to show each viewer/user ads relevant to them: because every beard trimmer ad shown to a woman was wasted time for her and money for the advertiser.
So far, his predictions have broadly become true, but stick with me.
The coolest part of his vision to my 18yo self was that each of us would have a personal ad software agent running on our PC/TV (the most personal devices at the time) that learned our desires and went out and found ads for stuff we might want. It was a completely different paradigm to the ad model of the day and one that was potentially privacy protecting because your personal ad agent would be the automated broker for your time and attention, and everyone would want this because a good agent would delight you with new services and products that you found useful and maybe didn’t know you wanted. There would be a healthy market of personal agents to choose from, too, because the costs of switching were minimal and companies would complete to create the best personal agents.
Alas, the optimism of the early Internet morphed into magic Google and Facebook/Meta pixels, and we got personal ad agents, but they are oligopolies with extreme network effects that are incompatible with privacy.
The Brave browser has come closest to the vision described by the dot com entrepreneur who spoke to my class, but I’ve always wondered whether anyone else would create personal ad agents, and of all the candidates, Apple is probably best positioned. I’m curious to see how they do it.