Oracle, popcorn data and the delirium of infinity

There is nothing to joke about when a business is terminating a product or a department, but Oracle shutting down their ad business, with the division generating $300 million last fiscal year, down from $2 billion in 2022, represents a very noisy crash in the collapsing phase of the old digital advertising world and the underlying dynamics sustaining it.

There couldn't be a more evident and effective image to summarise the crumbling of the vision of an industry which tried to persuade itself through a fairy tale of infinite reach at the highest quality, of assets growing on trees, of eyeballs sold by the kilo and data points traded like popcorn.