Advertising: becoming irrelevant (is dead)

Tyler,

Wonderful blog entry about the endless downward spiral of the ad industry. Of course, every ad executive would refuse to admit their model has failed, look at the numbers. There's no shame in admitting mistakes, learning and adapting.

Then again, I have one anecdote about crappy advertising. Without advertising, there wouldn't be TiVo. Without TiVo, I couldn't see myself living anymore. So, that's one good product crappy advertising gave us. Advertisers never ran ads for TiVo… people did. I bought a TiVo, along with a lifetime sub for $400 because of the recommendations of friends and the convenience the product gave me. It's what AdBlockPlus is to Firefox but for the TV.

A couple examples of advertising that works and doesn't bug the shit out of me: Pandora and conference sponsors. Pandora's ads make sense because they are purely visual and not audio-instream ads; thus making for a great user experience and relevance when they change songs in their app. It also helps if the ads are of good companies. Event sponsors at conferences are nice since a brand is at least attempting to target a specific niche that is related. Example — Monster Drink supporting the DesertBash LAN Party event… that was a really useful sponsor who also earned revenue from the event.

The bottom line is — advertising in itself needs to evolve from interruptions and become useful and advocating of their targets, not exploitative.

~Joe

Unfortunately, Pandora does use audio in-stream advertising now, and yes, it is very annoying.

Are they getting the return? Agencies are closing up everywhere. They
spend millions of client dollars on focus groups, slide decks and RFPs
that produce disruptive ads that don't work.

You are correct. Hulu is quite the exception, but the key there is
that Hulu doesn't make boring ads. I actually enjoy a lot of the stuff
I see on there.

I don't think advertising ever will or should go away, but the way
it's been done for the past 50 years won't work anymore.

Obviously not all of them are getting a return but many are still.

I think advertising is like the energy problem. If you want to solve it you can't dump everything into one solution. Electric cars won't fix it, carbon caps won't, nor will windmills, tidal generators, public transit, or nuclear. but together each will do a small piece (not nuclear) to fix the problem.

Advertising is the same. The most popular, go-to forms of advertising (television, radio, magazines, and newspapers) are being replaced in the marketplace for various reasons like the internet in some cases BECAUSE of the sheer volume of ads that have gone into markets like TV. But I don't agree that advertising is irrelevant. It is REALLY successful in moderation. Hulu has people watching their ads because they are short and not over played. People don't complain ads in google products because they are giving something away. Advertising is the thing that pays for free services.

Just noticed it now. They are also using pre-roll video advertising. They were so cool until this. But I know they don't want to do it, it's because the Copyright Royalty Board has them cornered.

Those ads aren't engaging, they interrupt. But It's a necessary evil to keep services alive. I may just cave and get their paid service. Still on the fence.

~joe

Wow, video advertising just keeps getting better. Small businesses have never had so many options available to them before and sites like Adwido will give it a higher chance of success.