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With the FCC rolling back on Net Neutrality, it can mean big changes for marketers and brands. In an industry where you already pay to be noticed by your potential buyers (whether it’s social media advertising or AdWords), digital marketers will have to hone in even further on their target customers and could drive up the cost of advertising if telecom companies take advantage. If Congress takes no action and lawsuits prove to be frivolous, these are possible roadblocks marketers could run into.
An Increase in Advertising
If telecom companies decide to take advantage of giving priority to websites or customers who pay more for faster load speeds, this could cause an increase in advertising across most channels. While AdWords may not be greatly affected, with the exception of YouTube, other sources like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn could charge more for brands to advertise if they pay more to have the fastest load speeds.
Meaning Brands Pay More to Target
This will only happen if telecom companies create tier data pricing for consumers. Brands may have to spend more money on ads that target different audiences based on which websites they are able to view based on their plan. Plus, with everything now beginning to be optimized for voice search (ex. Amazon Echo and Google Home), providers could make this a difficult experience for users and marketers may have a hard time determining audience data.
Difficulty Determining UX/UI Experience
If websites are loading slower based on what visitors are paying for, it will make it difficult for marketers to determine where issues are lying when it comes to the website experience. It will take looking further into the visitor and will make it more difficult to determine if the website actually loads slowly or if the visitor is paying for lower bandwidth. This can also be effected at the campaign level with Calls-to-Action that could be associated with linking social media accounts.
Data Filtering is a Possibility.
Because of the possibility that certain consumers will have access to certain parts of the internet, it can affect the different types of content they view. So if a blog post has video, visitors may not be able to stream it. This will result in marketers having to pay if they want their posts seen across the whole internet.
While a lot of companies have already spoken out about not taking part in the practices that people foresee happening, no one knows exactly how this will play out until companies or Congress start acting. Even though there is currently a lot of uncertainty, these are things to be on the lookout for if the future without Net Neutrality most people have envisioned comes to fruition.
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