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The Web Advertising Model

There has been much written about the web as a medium for advertisers. It seems to me that the prevailing tide does not support the theory of trickle down profits from mere numbers boasted about on some web assets. I am not saying that it does not work, it does in a whisper - village - kind of way. But image based impactual advertising requires a new breed of intellect if it is to survive the move of intellectual stimulation from magazines, newspapers, televisions and onto the web as a common medium for all. Why should we? 3G receivers allow us individual access to thousands of video shops of content. So content has a value? Hello?

Content has always had a value. Getting people to pay for it is not really a problem. The most rapacious pirates in the world do not sail about Somalia, but are most likely teenagers doing it because it is a bit of a lark and they do not have much pocket money, but still want to be in on the latest Spiderman movie. Policing the web against piracy may not be the answer. But in this phenomena lies the solution to advertisers.

In this blog and on sfsw.net in 2009 an exploration of how to make the web a most profitable place for the advertiser is part of the agenda. The first thing I feel is important is to ignore social networking as a medium for advertising. What?

Did I just say that? Yes. There is no point advertising when the product is self indulgence. Good art incorporates "the other" and advertising is dependent upon it.

If you watch Robert de Niro prattle on about his shopping trip, it may also be fundamentally a bad vehicle to plaster an advert upon.

It is a question of what is the web good at? It is good at demanding that users fill in forms to a collective hiss. It is good at delivering and organising content and allows the full intellect of conceptually brilliant artisans who write software to create machines that do work for us. Not idle chores so much as systems. From the thousands of advertising systems - The Google's model has been most successful. It is so much more than advertising, though.

Targetted content is only a part of the picture. Video has its limits, it tends to be singular in idea delivery (takes much time)- whereas the web provides multiple paths into everything. Images do so much. But what do we want the web to do for us? It is great at selling software. It is brilliant at distributing music. It is getting quite good at being a super convenient video store. But what is it best at?

Come back to this blog, this deserves expansion in a future posting.

Labels: advertising model, the end of advertising, web advertising

posted by Nicholas @ 1:11 AM