Why Is It So Hard to Find Every Ad in One Place?

When Cannes Lions recently pivoted to a subscription model after decades of being festival-driven, one perk it quickly focused on offering was its vast collection of ads and case studies. But the price tag for accessing all this content—about $350 annually—didn't sit well with some rising creatives, who felt such a repository of the world's best ads should be accessible to all. “It bugged us to think about how many cash-strapped and hungry creatives out there are going through the same hardship,” Quynh Tran, a creative intern at Innocean Berlin, explained of the initiative that she and fellow creative Toan Mai embarked on to persuade the Cannes Lions organizers to make its ad collection free to the industry. With Cannes calling its collection LoveTheWork.com, the duo decided to launch their own site at LoveTheWorkMore.com, where they essentially housed a spreadsheet of links to Lion-winning campaigns and case studies. Their free site was flooded with tens of thousands of visits and sparked Cannes to compromise by offering free access to its archives for those under 30. This public debate highlights a question that's lingered since the earliest days of the web: Why is it so hard to put every ad—or at least every ad worth watching—in one place? And is there a way to make them easily accessible without losing money in the process? While housing a comprehensive collection of ads and making them freely available might not sound like the most important mission out there, some in the industry feel it's an example of the kinds of resources that need to be available for inclusive talent to gain an even footing. “If we want more people from underrepresented backgrounds to enter the industry, then we need to remove the barriers to entry,” says Tom Crossley, chief executive of the School of Communication Arts. “Many people from underrepresented backgrounds are on low or no incomes, so they cannot afford the fees—this is where we need industry support.” Check Out All the Campaigns That Won Top Honors at Cannes Lions 2021 The potential pitfalls of monetizing creative There are several websites that focus on curating ads for the world to see. AdForum, TellyAds, BestAdsonTV and David Reviews are a few, and they each have different revenue strategies. Some are funded through memberships that offer to host creative work and profile companies, while others simply rely on revenue from display ads around the content. But monetizing a site that houses content to which you don't own the rights can be precarious, even when the content is ostensibly made to be shown widely for free. For example, when Bridgestone sought to remove one of its ads from Adland.tv in 2019, the brand's representatives reportedly threatened legal action against the site's cloud server host, and soon after, the site was taken offline. It returned later with a new hosting service. All sites that house advertising—including Adweek—can theoretically face such legal challenges and attempted content takedowns because ads live in a murky area of intellectual property rights. Brands own the rights to the ads they create, meaning they can cite laws like the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, aka the DMCA, in demanding that an ad be removed from a third-party site. "There's the risk, because you can always get a cease and desist," says Michael McSunas, a veteran advertising lawyer currently serving as general counsel for PrizeLogic. "Most likely you're not going to get sued for copyright infringement, but you're going to get the cease and desist." But wait, why wouldn't brands want their ads out there for all to see? You've probably noticed that brands generally pull their own ads off YouTube after six months or a year. That's usually because of contracts they've signed with talent or to license aspects like music. When those deals expire, the ads come down. Sometimes brands just want to expunge all traces of an ad, perhaps because it caused embarrassment or sparked backlash. Regardless of the reason, takedown requests put ad-hosting sites on the defensive. If they don't have written permission to feature the content—which many awards shows make sure to secure—they're left with few defenses beyond the hazy legal argument of "fair use." "There's an argument for fair use, at least in U.S. copyright law," McSunas says. "In general, it is used to allow users to show as much as they need to show, like [for] a movie review, where you'll get to show parts of it." If a brand wanted to dig its heels in, it could argue that hosting full versions of its ads went against the tenets of fair use. It's not a common situation, but it likely happens frequently on sites like YouTube where users host clips of content they don't own. Making it work One platform that's managed to build a large catalog of commercial work is Ads of the World, now a subsidiary of advertising awards program The Clios. The site, founded by Ivan Raszl, who is currently product manager for the awards program, is funded through a small number of display ads but—in its current form—predominantly exists to drive entries and awareness of the awards. That connection to the Clios has helped the site continue to offer its ad access for free while others have had to charge for access to ad archives. “We think the larger reach translates to a bigger benefit to both the creatives who are featured and the audience," Raszl says. "Informing, celebrating and connecting creative professionals is our primary mission, and we put our customers first in any way we possibly can." This connection between awards programs and ad archives—also found in the sibling relationships between AdForum and the Epica Awards—is part of why many creative leaders believe such collections of work should be available to all rather than housed behind paywalls. “I feel that the materials presented [at festivals like Cannes] should be open to all because it furthers the whole industry to share, whether that's posting award entries on social media or other platforms,” says Al Mosley, global chairman and chief creative officer of agency 180LA. Ads of the World founder Raszl says he's seen time and again how open access to ad collections can both educate and amplify the industry's rising talent. “Our properties helped a huge number of creative professionals in the last decades find their first job or get major promotion," he says. "It's likely we wouldn't have had the same impact if we were paywalled.” The Struggle to Balance Fair Use and User Generated Content

Creative Advertising

Why Is It So Hard to Find Every Ad in One Place?

As Cannes Lions learned, monetizing an archive of ads can spark debates around access

Stephen Lepitak

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Stephen Lepitak