Advertising Next
Surely advertising is the world’s most inefficient industry. Here are people who will plaster a bus with a ten-foot-high pop-out poster of a giant on the off chance it will encourage you to have your carpets cleaned.
Let’s walk through this process. For the ad to work, you must (a) notice it, (b) pay sufficient attention to absorb its message, (c) attach sufficient credibility to not immediately dismiss it, (d) retain that message until you enter a purchasing situation relevant to that product, and (e) find the message so persuasive that it alters the purchasing decision you would otherwise have made.
The chances of this are infinitesimal. And so advertising spams. It makes five hundred uninterested TV viewers sit through a 30-second spot in case one of them is in the market for a new SUV. The amazing part is that this is actually cost-effective. Advertising is a half-trillion-dollar industry that makes commercial sense even though most of its output is wasted.
Far more sensible would be if advertisers could restrict their ads to people likely to respond to them. They’d save bucketloads of money; we wouldn’t have to sit through ads for products we wouldn’t buy in a million years.
This yawning gap between the present state of the advertising industry and one that isn’t completely freaking insane means there will be change. Market segmentation has always been a big deal in marketing, but it’s getting huge. Marketers are ravenous for information about you, and they’re building immense data stores. These will enable them to tailor their messages to you—or, at least, to your market segment. In the short-term, it’ll mean more relevant ads, Google-style. Next, I think, comes more persuasive ads. That’s when they change not the product being advertised, but the message: playing up its green credentials if you’re environmentally conscious, its patriotism if you’re nationally minded, and so on.
Lately I’ve been thinking about my ideal state of advertising. And I don’t think it’s no ads at all. I would prefer no ads to the tidal wave of irrelevant ads I get currently, but in a perfect world, I do want information about products. Specifically, I want unbiased recommendations from people I respect and admire. That basically means friends and select celebrities. I want this to be “pull” information: I don’t want anyone randomly coming up and yakking about their amazing new phone. But if I’m thinking about a new phone, I’d like to be able to see what people with whom I identify think. I would like to browse through a list and see that Wild Pete has a Nokia but it sucks, Wil is wedded to his Motorola, and Stephen King knows where you can get a good deal on an iPhone.
The closest thing I’ve seen is Facebook. It’s all push—I get recommendations and links thrown at me whether they’re relevant or not, and almost entirely they’re not. But still, it’s socially-based purchasing advice. I think if Facebook had been smarter—if they’d remembered their success comes from giving people complete control over their own information, and hadn’t tried to wrest it back—they could have built the most effective, highly-targeted advertising platform in the world. Maybe they still will.
Until then, I’m skipping TV ads on my PVR, blocking them on the web with my browser, and listening to commercial-free internet radio.
Comments
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Lora (#3425)
Location: UK
Posted: 5839 days ago
There we go.
shabooty (#637)
Location: D.C./V.A/M.D.
Quote: "I will shake your foundation. I will shake the f**cking rafters. Nobody'll be the same -Danny Bonaduce ....& go visit my blog @: http://www.shabooty.com"
Posted: 5839 days ago
i told em to friend whore you like i did.
:)
Mike (#3559)
Posted: 5839 days ago
gstein42 (#585)
Location: 127.0.0.1
Quote: "That's not change! That's more of the same!"
Posted: 5839 days ago
there are still ads on the interweb?
Phill Sacre (#1822)
Location: London, UK
Quote: "Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows."
Posted: 5839 days ago
But yeah, with the exception of blocking internet ads (I don't think it's completely ethical to block ads on a site which is only paid for by advertising revenue, at least not if you use the site regularly) I'm skipping them! I can only recount about two occasions since I've been on the internet where I've found an ad useful... so much for contextual ads!
Yubi Shines (#1664)
Location: Canada
Quote: "HOPE RIDES ALONE!"
Posted: 5839 days ago
That reminds me of a minor rant I've been building up for a while. There's an ad I've been seeing in subways a lot for something called "Alesse". I hadn't heard of it before, and the ad was telling me nothing about what it was, except that it's something medical/medicinal, it's marketed to women, and it's liberating (but 99% of ads say that, so whatever).
I've spent several train rides mulling over it, since I rarely have a book with me or it's too shaky to read properly: What the crap is it? Tampons? Skin lotion? Diet pills?
I only just looked it up, and it's a birth control. But damn it, I can't tell if that's the worst ad ever because it didn't tell me what it was (me being its target audience more or less), or the best ad ever because it made me go look it up.
Hobbie (#1359)
Location: Cornwall, England
Quote: "There was a little man in his hair!"
Posted: 5839 days ago
What concerns me more is the matter of privacy. There's already a big legal fuss here in the UK because BT's internet service was scanning computers to target ads without specifically telling people it was doing it. It was a footnote, very small, at the bottom of a very long and boring user agreement, and when people found out they didn't like it.
I don't want adverts at all. I definitely don't want my privacy invaded over it. I'd rather they keep churning out the inefficient crap they do now, because I can ignore it or block it. And I absolutely disagree that you even need adverts. When I want to buy anything that constitutes a serious investment, or something where I've had problems in the past, I look up an impartial review on the internet off my own back, without someone specifically hawking it shoving it in my face. And everyone reading this can do the same, because to read this you have to be online.
The internet is a wonderful tool. Adverts are just another way of abusing it, because frankly you don't need them.
Douglas Bushong (#44)
Location: America (Virginia)
Quote: "When you are trying to teach someone a new job, it's best to just throw them into the fire and beat them. They'll get sharp or they'll break. Either way, you won't waste precious time teaching them a job that they aren't meant to do."
Posted: 5839 days ago
The second I did it I was shocked. Before that moment, I avoided banner ads like the plague, but I didn't give this one a second thought.
I guess the point to this story is that I agree with you: I enjoy tightly focused marketing, but I can't stand the spamming.
Traveller (#1939)
Location: Amphetamemeia
Quote: ""Surely you didn't mean select THAT button. That button is for serious people.""
Posted: 5839 days ago
Great clip on Subliminal advertising and it's effect on actual advertising geniuses.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQjr1YL0zg
Linnea1928 (#2654)
Location: Rosemount, MN
Posted: 5839 days ago
Charlotte Ryberg (#3498)
Location: Funen
Quote: "We're old chuffers in the very alien world!"
Posted: 5839 days ago
Ivan (#2404)
Location: Arizona
Quote: "Huh?"
Posted: 5839 days ago
It's the American way! At least the old American way. The new targeted ads online change the way everything works.
Emily (#609)
Location: New York
Quote: "When in doubt, fuck it. When not in doubt, get in doubt!"
Posted: 5838 days ago
Ralf Heinrich (#1441)
Location: Buehl, Germany
Quote: "What does this button do?"
Posted: 5838 days ago
Just a thought...
- an advertiser
;o)
Mats (#1057)
Location: Turku, Finland, Europe, Earth
Quote: ""The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist knows it." James Branch Cabell via Robert Oppenheimer"
Posted: 5838 days ago
What the hay is up with that???
You won't have any ads on nationstates 2, will you????
I still love you though, yours is the only blog I can be bothered to read, and you're one out of two contemporary novelists whose books I read, the other being Terry Pratchett (he's great, go buy all of his books now, but leave some for me!)
Yenzo (#829)
Location: Secret underwater pyramid base in the Pacific
Quote: "In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe (Carl Sagan)"
Posted: 5838 days ago
http://kotaku.com/386425/more-hidden-streetwear-in-gta-iv
I think that's kind of a cool idea regarding contextual advertising. On the other hand, by doing the ads the companies admit that their target audience consists of people that want to blow up a whole metropolis on their way to become a top-shelf violence-crazed gangster.
Man, I wish my PC could handle that game...
M.I.Minter (#347)
Location: Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Quote: "When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading."
Posted: 5838 days ago
this is a great article that talks about the next big things in advertising, and it's got Joss in it.
Highfive.
M. Ian Minter
Neil (#943)
Location: Manchester, UK
Quote: ""Democracy is the worst system, apart from all the others." - Churchill"
Posted: 5837 days ago
Is advertising really inefficient given that, once each advert is produced, the marginal cost of distributing it to more people is negligible for most media?
Also, though they might like us to think so, surely advertising isn't really trying to alter the purchasing decisions we would otherwise have made, as you put it, but rather to prompt us to make purchasing decisions in the first place: they are cumulatively trying to wear us down so that we buy something else we fundamentally don't need...
Mark Tran (#3249)
Location: Canada
Quote: "If you lived here, You'd be home."
Posted: 5837 days ago
Brenng (#3235)
Location: UK (sitting down)
Quote: "Laugh when all the world cries and they'll lock you up for being an antisocial freak. www.brennigjones.com - there's a laugh in there somewhere!"
Posted: 5832 days ago
Is nothing sacred?
Jeffrey (#2286)
Location: Right here
Quote: "Mathematics is a powerful language. Just look at how mathematicians destroyed the housing market."
Posted: 5829 days ago
Sophie (#891)
Location: Devon
Posted: 5826 days ago
It's probably also good if you're wanting to set up a brand's reputation - you don't normally buy a branded product if you feel like you're the only one that knows it's supposed to be cool. People might be more likely to buy brand-name clothes if they feel that everybody has been told that they're cool, rather than just themselves and a few friends.
It probably all depends on what type of product you're trying to sell - some people and subcultures like to feel that they're the only ones who know about a brand's reputation, but maybe the person buying the new SUV wants to know that everyone on the street has been told that their brand of SUV is the most stylish and expensive.
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