Good post. The old crusty grail was to sell stuff whilst people were clapping their hands and had the jingle stuck in their heads. The brand new holy grail is to sell stuff whilst people feel like they are learning something new and clever.
Another crucial difference between a communications and an entertainment medium (phone vs. TV) is that the former is interactive 'pull' (you getting what you want) and the latter is passive 'push,' in which you know you must accept what the broadcaster is sending, without user interaction--except when we scream uselessly at the TV screen vs. particularly awful inanities. The user understands this difference, and accepts the inevitable ads in the latter. In the former, the ads stand in the way of user action. The Internet is a new form of communication in which both pull and push are blended.
But recall that some communications services are being offered free or at reduced rates if the user agrees to accept an initial ad.
For the user, the critical difference is the value of time: most professionals want action, not ads. Imagine having to sit through a commercial message before you could start your car (eeek!--someone will use this as an advertising medium).
Good post, I agree. Regarding what Tim says about the new holy grail, you can see it all over the place in pop-marketing info. What's so funny about the new holy grail is that it works mostly for geek-types and early adopters. The rest of the folks are not that driven by learing something new and clever.
Also, ever heard the busy signal ad from the phone company? "Let Repeat-Dialing blah blah blah" It is extremely irritating. I do not want ads on my phone, period!
As an advertiser, I struggle with what portion of the buy should go toward the web. I know TV works. I know radio works. Print still works. But the web? Banners? Who knows, and nobody can really tell me.
The typical mantra is to put say $500k in web this year--and it's done as a learning exercise. Next year, let's double the budget and get even more learning. It's all about the learning.
What if the learning is that it really doesn't work? If so, that's a $1.5 million lesson, and it's done at the expense of other media that's time tested and proven. Tough stuff.
Ad Contrarian, I think the Internet is already an entertainment medium. For instance, if you check out Alexa's international ranking of websites, you see that the first places are occupied by entertainment sites:
1. Yahoo!
2. Google
3. YouTube
4. Windows Live
5. Microsoft Network (MSN)
6. Myspace
7. Wikipedia
8. Facebook
9. Blogger.com
10. Yahoo! Japan
11. Orkut
12. RapidShare
Especially if you take into account that the Wikipedia is so unreliable you can take it as an entertainment site, too. hehehe...
At Farres, I'd say there is a way for you to save all that money: understanding that advertising online will not necessarily lead you to sales, but it may help your company get stuck on a person's mind more easily. Tell me if you haven't got those smiles ads stucked in your brain, and tell me whether you won't look for those smilies again if you are ever in need of... well, smilies for your IM application.
As I see it, that's the correct way to advertise on the web. PPC sucks.
Good points from your commenters, and I'm just a schmoe, but am online much of the day for info (not entertainment) and I see web ads as similar to outdoor: they don't make me act,
they seem fairly low-class (no offense), and they seem to be just about 'impressions' - like those bus bench ads with eager realtor faces that I drive past every day... it may eventually build a familiarity for a brand or product when I AM in need of it. But otherwise, onscreen is the same as outdoor to me.
But I love getting an education here, thanks for the post.
TAC- Do you really use a dictionary? Or do you use dictionary.com?
Farres- What have you learned from TV? Or radio? Isn't all advertising about test and learn? How do you know what any of it is getting you? Isn't it all a crap shoot?
Hello JM-
My point is that it's easier (and more fun!) to test and learn with somebody else's money.
How in the world can you rate the effectiveness of any media without referencing the goals of reaching a specific audience with a specific campaign? Customers decide the right media for a campaign -- and good marketers go where the customers are (whether it's print, TV, radio, outdoor, online or something that hasn't yet shown up in an agency's media mix.)
Commenting by HaloScan
