My Days of .Com
Future of Interactive Advertising

All media are not created equal

Written by Mihai Dragan on Thursday, April 30th, 2009 ( One response )
Tags: adoption rate, Interactive Advertising, Online Media

Last night I was invited to debate weather online advertising is overrated. Two people representing conventional agencies (some of the best) and two representing interactive agencies. Things got a little heated, we’ve got a little carried away (Latin characters, you know…) but in the end we had not reached our conclusion.

I couldn’t help think about it all day and reached some conclusions of my own

All media serve one purpose: communication

In the end we must see the holistic view: we do it for the client. And the client has separate objectives from the agencies’ . These objectives don’t really depend on GRPs or CTRs. They depend on keeping the business growing, having a larger and more satisfied customer base and others.

We can do this for the clients using our tools. Interactive agencies work with some tools, classic agencies work with others. In the end it’s the result that counts.

All media are not created equal

TV is more popular than Internet. So are newspapers. Radio used to be there too. Therefore they get more viewers and advertising.

TV also gets more money, more influence bla bla… you get the point.

However… rarely has human kind adopted anything as fast as it did adopt the Internet. As you can see here Internet has been adopted faster than automobiles, air travel, television, cell phones … well – everything.

This has caused quite a commotion with business in general. “Man, we have this new thing, the Internet”. “What does it do?”. “Well…I am not quite sure. But everybody’s doing it”.

Companies are not yet sure of what to make of it. Should they use it? Should they ignore it? Is this “Internet Advertising” thing good or bad? What is it with this “bloggers” and such? And how come all this Google-Doogle companies are making so much money – they have no product.

But they are there. Real or not their services are accessed and used by billions. They worth billions. Media companies are shifting to internet based, on demand services. Paid or not. News Corp invested 600 millions in something it’s yet to understand and monetize.

Advertising is a concept. Subject to change.

What Ogilvy invented might not last beyond the next 50 years. What Burnett used in the eighties might not have any kind of relevance for iTV or something similar to Apple TV.

What happens when written media is electronically updated, kind of like your RSS reader? Syndicated too, just like it. What happens then to the old-school ads?

What happens when people start being the advertising agencies? Think about it. Things like affiliate marketing take out the agency and connect the publisher directly to the client.

And in the end – what if … just saying … what if someday there will be no advertising left. Just information. Created, organized, consumed by the masses?