A New Online Ad Model

Eureka!  I think I've solved the riddle about measuring online ad efficacy:

Don't run ads.

Lots of companies are running online ads, of course.  AP reports they'll spend $20 billion this year, which is 25% increase, and a likely under-estimate.  Considering the time people of all ages are spending online -- which is somewhat additive to time spent with analog media, but the physical reality of only so many hours in a day means there's substitution going on, sometimes significantly -- there's an ongoing debate underway within the Media Creative Industrial Complex on how to compare it to traditional media.

You see, there's been an elegantly simple equation supporting the ad world for almost a century now, and it goes something like this:

• Consumers are receptive to new products and services
• Making them aware correlates with sales
• Media outlets deliver that awareness
• Therefore, you buy exposure (readers, listeners, watchers) and place ads

This equation stopped adding up long before there was something called the Internet. 

Back in the 1960s, while some collegians were messing around with a glorified science-fair project called ARPAnet, the rest of us woke up, and got very cynical and distrusting of advertising.  It was:

• A generational thing (the Boomers were the first to come of age in a mediaverse of information, albeit analog)
• A technical thing (media choices had started to multiply, so there was no ‘authorized’ voice to obey)
• A cultural thing (the era of 1950s affluence and conformity had bred rejection among its progeny)

So, while we remember ads getting funnier, edgier, and marketing more pervasive along with them, we readers, listeners, and watchers were already getting less trusting, more distracted, and harder overall to convince or keep loyal.  The seeds of today's churning, chaotic mediaverse were sown back in those days.  Like most epoch-changing moments, we really didn't see what was happening when it was happening.

But the equation started to break down, just as the system set up to benefit from it -- companies allocating massive budgets, agencies ready to create ways to spend it, and media outlets with places to put the ads -- chugged along, and does so to this day.  Its correlation between brand awareness and sales is somewhat vague (and often times wholly unconnected), but it still yields sums, generally and sometimes, to keep lots of people employed.

Enter the Internet.

It kind of seems like people are reading, listening, and watching the same ways they used to consume via traditional media, sort of.  You can create stuff, and people experience it.  There are new ways to make that happen, like user-generated content and social activities like sharing and comment, but it's still an advertising medium, right?  People click and we can measure it, but they used to change TV channels and, after all, we figured out how to measure that.  So the question we should ask ourselves is "how can we make the ad equation work the same way online?"

Maybe not.  The Internet can't fix an ad model that was crapping out before anybody went online.

We can try to measure clicks, logs, cookies, page views, forwards, comments, edits, stalagmites, or whatever, but it's never going to be the same as buying access to an interested consumer audience that can be told things that they'll believe and follow.  That's because they're not there anymore.

It's possible that there is no ad model for the Internet, no easy way to migrate a practice  born of, and wedded to, a particular time and circumstance in world history, and replicate it so that everyone can burn through those budgets allocated for advertising and enabled by comfortable measurement standards from Nielsen, Arbitron, etc.   

Perhaps it's not just a different medium, but not a medium at all?  Maybe it's a place?  A behavior?  Who knows?

Imagine if we'd not spent the 20th Century perfecting the practice of marketing and branding (I know, impossible, but humor me), and just discovered this newfangled gizmo that lets people do new and different things at the touch of a button.

How would we use the medium to connect with them in meaningful, relevant ways?

I might be through ads.  It might not be. 

It would help to solve the riddle if we stopped trying to make our favorite answer fit the question. 

Comments

[Scott White]

Well I agree that TV advertising is dead, dead and dead. Now we just Tivo or DVR right through that ad spending.

Online advertising? I think if we keep moving in a positive direction it will be the most effective way to advertise. Social Media is a tremendous opportunity for advertisers if they play by the rules. If they start "selling" and forget they are "sharing" they will lose big money.

Don't forget Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in this mix of online advertising as well. We've optimized all are clients sites and they are having BIG time success. Sales are increasing at exponential rates.

The reason? If you are in Google's top ten then the consumer feels you must be of importance. The walls come down and sales are made. Thank Google and its branding for that.

We haven't chased a traditional lead in years. Customers just usually call us in a panic, ready to go. Google branding company, our little company of 15 is #1 and #2.

I really believe that there is and should be a place for online advertising. Bloggers are now paid to write reviews. Links from your site suddenly have a value. People who wouldn't ordinarlily have a revenue stream now do.

It's here to stay as long as we remember it's different.

[Scott White]

Well I agree that TV advertising is dead, dead and dead. Now we just Tivo or DVR right through that ad spending.

Online advertising? I think if we keep moving in a positive direction it will be the most effective way to advertise. Social Media is a tremendous opportunity for advertisers if they play by the rules. If they start "selling" and forget they are "sharing" they will lose big money.

Don't forget Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in this mix of online advertising as well. We've optimized all are clients sites and they are having BIG time success. Sales are increasing at exponential rates.

The reason? If you are in Google's top ten then the consumer feels you must be of importance. The walls come down and sales are made. Thank Google and its branding for that.

We haven't chased a traditional lead in years. Customers just usually call us in a panic, ready to go. Google branding company, our little company of 15 is #1 and #2.

I really believe that there is and should be a place for online advertising. Bloggers are now paid to write reviews. Links from your site suddenly have a value. People who wouldn't ordinarlily have a revenue stream now do.

It's here to stay as long as we remember it's different.

[Scott White]

Thanks for the great article. I've posted a repsponse to it over at:

http://www.brandidentityguru.com/wordpress