Exactamundo
“Making money with ads? Not much longer…” says Dave Winer. When I say this, I’m a crank. When he says it, he’s a vastly more qualified crank. We’re both right:
When they finish the process of better and better targeted advertising, that’s when the whole idea of advertising will go poof, will disappear. If it’s perfectly targeted, it isn’t advertising, it’s information. Information is welcome, advertising is offensive. Who wants to pay to create information that’s discarded? Who wants to pay to be a nuisance? Wouldn’t it be better to pay to get the information to the people who want it? Are you afraid no one wants your information? Then maybe you’d better do some research and make a product that people actually want to know about.
…The current product development process, that focuses on a few supposed geniuses and ignores the intelligence that’s in the user’s minds, same as with unconferences, is about to run its course much as the old style conference can’t possibly compete with one that involves the brains of the people formerly known as the audience. Think about it. There’s a big trend here, imho it’s the difference between the 20th and 21st centuries. In the past the flow of ideas for products was heavily centralized, and based on advertising to build demand. In the future, the flow of ideas for products will happen everywhere, all the time, and products with small markets will be worth making because we’ll be able to find the users, or more accurately, they’ll be able to find us. “Targeting” customers is the wrong metaphor for the future. Instead make it easy for the people who lust for what you have to find you. How? 1. Find out what they want, and 2. Make it for them and 3. Go back to where you found out about it, and tell them it’s available.
Filed under: Arts, Blogging, Business, Communication, Life, RSS Subscriptions
Cranks? In my industry, this has already happened.
When I was training in hypnotherapy six years ago, the accepted means of building your business was via old-fashioned advertising - leaflets, brochures, poster advertising, the occasional radio slot, and Yellow Pages.
Over the last two years, that all died. 90% of current business comes through one version or another of Dave’s 3 steps (1. Find out what they want..). If you look at older hypnotherapy websites, you’ll read all manner of b******t about the wonders of hypnosis: the newer, successful ones use search etc. to track changing needs and demands and respond to those.
The big challenge is taking the next step on and becoming disruptable. Just adding a blog won’t necessarily do it - anything that open, that’s to do with therapy, quickly becomes over-run by the bitter and the sinister. Moderation is slow and can be off-putting to the less tech-savvy. Some kind of open, listening, interactive mechanism that demands as little as possible from the user - an adaptation of the CMS/Joomla idea, perhaps.
Given how quickly customers are moving away even from the typical online set-ups of 18 months ago, we can’t have much over a year to work this one out.
I will have to read the entire article, but Mr. Winer seems to be falling for what I call the Futurist’s Fantasy Fallacy. He sees the effectiveness of viral campaigns and how the internet can create demand in a passive and receptive way. A way which is often more fluid, accepted, and inexpensive than traditional advertising. “Information wants to be free yo!” I can hear him calling out.
But what he seems to be forgetting is the ultimate necessity of the “pseudoenvironment” and for the media to assist users in finding new things. Media, does after all mean middle. Add to that the constant need to expand markets and market demand.
Take something like Pandora internet radio for a minute. I just discovered this not too long ago, I would have loved to discover it earlier. The viral process of information sharing was slow in directing me to the product and building an audience rapidly is a necessary step for many products which have a short shelf life.
I also think it is a mistake to have the paradigm that correctly targeted advertising is merely information. Sometimes the correctly targeted audience is an audience who wants to be entertained by show/book x, and by inserting product identity into the product you are still advertising.
Take the new book/alternate reality game being written by Sean Russell. He had a fictional “webzine” for young women as a part of the story/game, wouldn’t it be better if he used a real magazine? That is in fact what he did. ARG’s, btw, are almost entirely contingent on the viral aspect, and on some very smart participants. Think of the ARG built around Spielberg’s AI, The Beast.
I have written about ARGs, which would make a great milieu for market research, here.
There’s nothing ‘viral’ about the blogosphere. It’s a network, with network dynamics, the greatest distribution network in history, in fact.
The point is, when you look at companies foaming at the mouth about the idea of being able to insert big, ugly ads in RSS feeds, they are missing the real opportunity: Put out an RSS feed of actually useful, valuable information or entertainment. You don’t need an ad when you’re bringing people value, and an ad is very rarely that.
I agree entirely about the RSS feed thing. That won’t bring customers, just annoyance. That said, a well designed banner on a site I like will do just fine. But we know that junk mail, whether snail or electronic, doesn’t work for crap anyway.
As for the internet not being viral…We’d have to talk about what you mean. The dancing baby ending up on Ally McBeal seemed to me to be the result of a viral meme, same with a lot of youTube/MySpace stuff. But that just may be a difference of vocabulary.
Naturally, the internet is a network (it even says so in the name), but it has both macro and micro capabilities. In fact, a user could never encounter the larger webonetosphere if the user didn’t want and that means it is also cliqueish (though I guess most networks are) and some products need to grow audience. I am obviously referring to things like television shows/movies/books and not products where demand creates product. Sure entertainment follows that model, with one exception, that the demand is pre-existing and often unknown in entertainment. If everyone knew what the audience wanted…on second thought I don’t want to live in that world.
Now is the point in the email where I backtrack and faun. Your sites are one of the areas I go to when trying to form my opinions regarding the usefulness of the internet and how to best harness it for communication/consumer purposes. So any discussions we may enter into, regarding the internet, you should read as if they were coming from an excited child who lacks internal monologue and just puts everything out there.
If I had any idea how to effectively market on the internet, I wouldn’t be desperately seeking a PR firm to help promote the non-profit of which I am the director. Which I am in the process of doing.