Net Neutrality Rollback: 3 critical plays for brands and agencies.

If you have access to news at all today, you know the shift has hit the fan, my friends. In my industry, friends are calling it the "de-democratization" of the Internet. We basically only really know that it's a alteration in control, and we do not know what will happen when groups will seek legal action to prevent it.

If you are an agency or brand who relies heavily on digital marketing (and that's prob 100% of you), there are 3 critical things you shoudl be doing right now:

1. Keep Calm. While you must pay attention to all of the news about the affects; There's no reason to jump out of your skin thinking everything that brought us the incredible boon with the advent of the www is going to roll back overnight. Paywalls already exist on some content sites. Likely, this will take a while before the maneuvers of the ISPs and telecom companies impact any of us. Go ahead with your 2018 digital plans and know that it is "likely" you will obtain the reach and engagement percentages you are used to in the coming year. But, be cognizant of the strategy you need to employ if it rolls out quickly. Plan for the worst, deploy the best.
2. Save Money. The cost to reach your target audience is likely to skyrocket, and we may see a tightening of self-serve media that has been so popular in the last few years. Publisher and ISP relationships will likely be mandated for an agency to broker advertising to their clients. It may go from the "Wild West" to "Wall Street" in coming times.

"At its core the net neutrality repeal threatens competition, and ultimately quality. It's going to create even bigger hurdles for smaller brands with smaller budgets to try and get a foot in the door, thus widening the already evident divides in the market. Smart and scrappy advertising becomes even less impactful and brand dollars will mean everything."

Anisha Naik, account director (Mozilla), Fetch

3. Double down on opt-in marketing now. Increasing the number of people who give your brand permission to send marketing materials is the bird in the hand. Traditional delivery like email will likely be one of the few methods that will have cost parity for today. This means, you have to get to the ask in all of your advertising. Do not waste that click. Brand lift will be complicated to measure, and expensive to gather data.

It does hurt enterpreneurship the most, as Anisha is quoted above, small brands will no longer have a level playing field. You'll need a lot more than $40 to register a URL and creativity to launch to Internet fame and fortune. You'll need the fortune first.

Bottom Line: Play hard and fast.

Spend more now while you can still easily reach your target audience on some scale. That 2018 digital media budget? Double it.

Agencies, drop your commission for 2018 in order to win for your clients, especially if you are using the same tactics as 2017. Develop an incubator within your company to have a solid, factual plan for each client industry should this become a reality sooner than we think.

Remember, great strategy is difficult to copy.

How will you separate yourselves from the thousands of other agencies who are re-heating Net Neutrality maneuvers in a post- neutrality world. The payload for an agency will be to understand and secure necessary relationships with the new Internet overlords.