2022 marks a big milestone: True Interactive celebrates our 15th birthday. We’re now old enough for a learner’s permit to drive a car in Illinois.
Our story, and the story of the internet, has been shaped enormously by the actions of a few influential companies:
- Google organized the world’s information online and taught everyone how to find it.
- Meta connected people through social media.
- Thanks to Apple, we took the internet with us on our mobile phones.
- YouTube changed how we consume content with video.
- Amazon made the world comfortable conducting commerce online.
These and a handful of other companies rewrote the rules for how businesses and people discover each other and build relationships.
Online advertising is at the center of this change. At True Interactive, we are grateful to the clients who have trusted us to help them figure out how to succeed in the digital age, and to our own people who’ve brought to our client relationships a spirit of hard work, collaboration, transparency, and a commitment to results. Businesses like to say that their people are their strongest assets, but people are more than that: they form our culture. Both the people who work for us and the people who work with us.
And we are proud of that culture. The magic that happens when great people and clients collaborate has produced remarkable results, such as triple-digit returns on ad spend and a dramatic reduction in costs. (You can read more about our work here.) And from our experiences, we’ve developed services ranging from search engine marketing to social media advertising that create a foundation for our team to innovate.
The next 15 years will evolve differently than the last. We’re probably nearing the end of an era when single companies could wield such enormous impact. The industry has become far too diversified for one business to change consumer behavior in far-reaching ways as Google did with its founding in 1998. And the fast-moving digital world still has few barriers to entry, which opens up the playing field.
Consider TikTok, which didn’t even exist until 2016 and has now challenged YouTube’s dominance with inventive short-form video. Or Snapchat, which keeps nudging the marketing world to embrace augmented reality even though its main rivals such as Meta had a long head start. The connected TV space still feels wide open.
And then there’s the metaverse. It’s just too vast and far-reaching for any single company to dominate. In fact, the fundamental notion of the metaverse is predicated upon the development of a decentralized web, Web 3.0. We’re only six months into 2022, and we’ve already seen just how much of a free-for-all that this emerging world feels like right now. Some of the building blocks of the metaverse, such as cryptocurrencies and nonfungible tokens (NFTs), sounded so fresh and exciting at the beginning of the year. Now businesses and people everywhere are learning (sometimes the hard way) how far those technologies still have to go before they redefine the landscape the way search, mobile computing, and video did.
We’re as bullish on emerging technologies and forms of computing as we were 15 years ago when we figured out how to help businesses build powerful brands even as human beings were learning how to search online. We can promise you that regardless of how the digital world evolves, we will always:
- Not succumb to hype. We’re on the forefront of change, but everything we need to do must be grounded in reality, not wild speculation.
- Deliver measurable results. If we can’t deliver measurable value, we won’t do it.
- Be totally transparent. Our clients know what they’re getting from us. And they know how we deliver value. Trust is a wonderful thing. It must be earned through openness.
What excites us most? The unknown. The next wave of change that no one sees coming. The unknown creates a level playing field. The unknown is a vast well of opportunity. Much of the digital world was unknown when we were founded, and look where we are now thanks to our people and our clients. Whatever happens next, our culture of hard work, collaboration, transparency, and commitment to delivering results will ensure that we thrive. Together.
Happy 15, everyone!
— Kurt Anagnostopoulos and Mark Smith
