Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Advertising Predictions

In thinking about the future state of advertising and attempting to make valid predictions about the possible health of and avenues through that the industry will indeed travel in the near future, I will draw from (correct, in my opinion) predictions of advertising contained and proselytized in the now iconic book "The Cluetrain Manifesto." I will therefore concentrate on Internet advertising. Internet advertising is interesting in my opinion and it presents a bit of a paradox - large amounts of consumers etc. are online which translates into a ton of opportunity to have many different brands shown and discovered. But the conversation and the ever- burgeoning culture online may not put up with the old methods of one-way advertising.

I believe that the sum of advertising on the web will continue to keep rising. This will be in part because of the massive amount of "eyeballs" on such social networking sites as Facebook (over 350 million people) & Digg. Interestingly, many Internet companies have been saying for years that advertising is how they are going to be making their money; but this may be changing. Brian Solis states recently in his social marketing predictions for 2010, that the role of the new marketer will entail earning media and not buying it. This fits in nicely with Levine et al. who stated over 10 years ago in Cluetrain that "word-of-web", and not traditional advertising is the future of advertising. I agree.

I believe most traditional advertising will be rendered obsolete in the near future, with most consumers utilizing what "real" customers have to say about a product. Amazon's user reviews is a great example of this. Ad's (i.e. banner ads online) will always have the hypnotic, subliminal effect on getting people to buy their products, but the conversation between consumers occurring on the web now will eclipse old advertising.

No comments: