Response to Eric Clemons’ “Why Advertising is Failing on The Internet”
I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.
-David Ogilvy
I have to agree with the premise of Eric Clemons’ insightful guest post on TechCrunch today. But I think he is a bit too defeatist in his position that there’s no value to ads on the ‘net, even in their current form. Let’s face it; they influence consumer behavior to a measurable extent. Cool ad campaigns simply work, and we can ALL remember the GoDaddy girl or the cool Apple ad in which a banner talks to another banner.
Some offers are also just that good — a campaign for flights that offers flights to the Bahamas for $99 is sure to get a lot of bookings. Yes, these scant successes are advertising working in spite of itself, but we have to admit the potential is there.
Let’s agree with Ogilvy that ads just have to be informational. I bet if I were to time-warp and show you an internet display ad from 2015, you’d say “that doesn’t look like an ad.” Exactly: the ads of “the future” will be site features, plain and simple. Tools to get you to an end that you choose, that happens to benefit the conduit of that end, the advertiser. Clemons brings up something close to this in his assessment of alternative monetization methods: “Some websites exist solely to sell real things.” Yes indeed, and that’s a business model better than banner ads. So, wouldn’t an ad that was essentially a helpful conduit to sell such real things (instead of forcing a stilted and irrelevant message upon the consumer) make sense?
In any case, I look at this as yet another smart voice for an ad revolution…
i think eric got it completely wrong. ad’s don’t satisfy the consumer’s need for more information, but are really driven to keep product messaging top of mind.
Clemons got it completely wrong. While some of the challenges to online advertising presented are notable, the problem — “the car won’t go” — cannot be proclaimed to be the “car” when you haven’t bothered to check the gas gauge. And in those cases, the problem is temporary. I think you have it right that the ads being presented today are not designed inform and that the ads of tomorrow will likely get it right.
Best,
Rich
Rich,
The problem is that ads cannot compete with other information sources on the Internet. An ad is designed for one overriding purpose: persuasion. If I have an inferior product, I will clearly not advertise it honestly. I will be selective, I will distort, I will distract. I don’t see that fundamental goal changing.
Review sites, on the other hand, provide consumer-generated content that is far more helpful. The motive for a review site is to host reputable, trusted reviews, not persuade me to one product or another.
I wrote a longer reaction to Clemons here:
http://www.whyweworry.com/blog/2009/06/29/why-advertising-will-fail-on-the-internet/