The Internet is people. People are the Internet. People dislike advertising. It is that simple, yet the advertising industry thinks that they can change it to their own liking. This is completely wrong in so many ways, and delusional.
The popularity of social media such as social networking, bookmarking and social news only drives home the fact that the Internet is driven by people and their passions. While the Internet is largely commercial in some form or fashion, it is not the Internet. The World Wide Web is an interconnected communication infrastructure and nothing more. What happens on that networking infrastructure is an extension of real-world socialization by human beings. This will *never* change.
Before the over-commercialization of the Internet, people were and still by large are congregating with others, not to buy or sell, but to enjoy conversation and others company. Advertising has intruded into those conversations and people have from the very beginning, shown distaste for the intrusion.
Internet History Snapshot
I have watched the growth of the Internet from nearly the very beginning. In the beginning, it was Arpanet, the military and universities were the largest majority of users. Back in this time there were only command line email (ASCII) and FTP (file transfer protocol) to communicate or to download files. I fondly recall using Gopher, Veronica, Jughead and Archie (see references) to find and download files before there was ever a web browser application.
I can remember when Usenet newsgroups were the only place to congregate and discuss things close to our hearts. I remember discussion (mailing) lists and the flame wars that lasted for many months or longer. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) became the de facto standard of real time communication back before Instant Messaging (IM) was even a glimmer in developer’s eyes.
If someone tried injecting commercial advertising into these gatherings, often much anger and hilarity would ensue. People have been crucified, shunned, embarrassed, ridiculed or banned online over it. This is still true today and will be forever and always.
Congregating, Socializing and Discussions
All one has to do is frequent online forums, Usenet newsgroups, IRC, social networking sites or anywhere users socialize to see just how much commercial advertising is abhorred. If you are brave (or stupid), register for a forum and post commercial advertisements. See how quickly you are lambasted, ruthlessly ridiculed or banned. I would venture a guess it would only take about an hour at most, if that long. The point is people dislike intrusions by advertising or marketing while they are relaxing and having conversations with others.
It does not matter what the advertising industry thinks or does. The fact is “people” drive the Internet not the other way around. Until the industry gets this idea and embraces it then their efforts will be largely futile.
Look at the average click through rates of banner and contextual ads. Online advertising just does not work well. You can paint a horse any color you want, but the fact remains that it is still a horse and no amount of paint is going to cover that fact up.
Most ads these days barely garner a half a percent (0.50%) of click-through actions, if that much. Of course, ignorant corporate executives are still buying into the sales pitches. Granted, contextual advertising (text ads) do a bit better these still do not equate to more than one to two percent click-through at best. People still see the “horse”.
The advertising industry collectively has been selling clients a “bag of goods” with online advertising, claiming their ability to extend a brand’s reach, gain new customers, or sell more products. You know the song and dance, we have all seen or read it somewhere on the Internet. The problem is the people (users) are not buying into it. You can slap up as much advertising as you want, we as users will continue to ignore it. Eventually the return on investment will become so miniscule that advertising executives will not be able to sell their clients on the idea of Internet advertising at all.
A Dislike for Advertising
From the very beginning, people have voiced their immense dislike of online advertising (more so than other formats). With television advertising, we have learned it is inevitable and must endure ads to be entertained. Of course, many of us switch channels, turn down the volume, take a bathroom break or grab a snack from the fridge during the ad spots.
Even television advertising is largely ignored. Why do you think they started throwing those little ads in the lower corner or across the bottom of your favorite TV show? Because the thirty-second ad spots are not working. I believe it will not be long (if it has not happened already) before television viewers ignore those bothersome little ads as well. I know I do not “see” them, nor can I even recall any I have seen. One thing is for certain, they are very irritating until you learn to ignore them.
What is next? Will we eventually see split screen programming where a TV ad blares over half the screen while we try to watch a program on the other half? If things get worse, people will simply stop watching television. Even the premium cable channels that you pay extra money for have ads running on them. I can remember a day when premium channels meant you were paying *not* to see advertising.
Advertising in general is lazy, it doesn’t add anything to the conversation. It disrupts people’s activities, it takes away from our concentration. Advertising is a one-way communication. It talks “at” people rather than “with” people. No one that I know of can honestly say they enjoy being talked at (demeaning) as opposed to with (conversations). Banner advertising and even television advertising does not require any effort to throw on a web page or TV screen, other than the time to create it and people obviously sense this. Advertising such as it is today is not genuine or authentic. It is quite generic and “lazy”.
So how have advertisers combated this? They continuously create annoying advertising that people largely block out. Mentally Internet (and TV) users have learned to ignore it, and of course, this leads advertisers to create even more intrusive and annoying ads. I wonder how long it will take the advertising industry to realize that they have been going at it completely wrong. It seems that by large the advertising industry thinks the net is all about them and they are so wrong.
The Internet is about people, and people want to socialize. Socializing is ingrained into us as human beings. We all have a need to be a part of something larger whether it is online or off. This is what drives the Internet and us. When you inject annoying advertising into the mix people get angry. It is the antithesis of advertising. I would like think that product manufacturers would prefer to have people talking about their product in a natural form, as this is best kind of product branding and advertising that they could ever hope to have. Imagine if companies jumped into the conversation, filled an immediate need or solved a problem. The word of mouth and goodwill would spread like wildfire. You cannot put a price on that type of advertising it is priceless.
Of course, this kind of involved advertising must be genuine to be effective. It requires companies to expend time and effort (unlike banner ads and TV commercials). People can sense when someone is faking it or blowing smoke up their collective rear-ends and will ignore it.
Advertising Is Not Inherently Bad
I am not saying advertising is a bad thing, the advertising industry as a whole is going about it all wrong.
If someone in a group mentions a product of interest or a problem they have, chances are others in their social group is going to help them find what they are looking for or lend a hand in solving the problem. Companies should be jumping into the conversation and solving the problem or suggesting a product that will address a need. This is the best kind of advertising that a company could ever ask for. The problem is ad execs that run things still have not figured this out, and companies are still buying into the (in your face) online advertising hype. Perhaps if people got out of their comfort zone, they would see the merits of direct involvement.
Companies must get involved in the conversations and discussions. I do not mean disrupting conversations with commercial content, but to get involved where their products or services are discussed. They could answer questions, solve a problem, create a stir of excitement about product enhancements and maybe find out what their products lack. Companies that listen to their do customers seem to have the better products. So why not join the conversation and become involved rather than just observing. Think about that for a minute and get out of that comfort zone.
My Own Perspective
I have been involved with publishing, both online and print since the early 1990’s. I have experienced firsthand that online advertising does not work all that well online. While I do have sites with advertising running on them, the advertising income is not a large portion of the income derived from these activities.
The only online advertising that I have found that works is: If the advertised product solves a problem or immediate need, or if by some off chance the user was looking for it at exactly the moment that they saw the advertisement. Other than that, current online advertising methods do not work, period. This is not a statement of fact, but of truth.
The sites I operate are quite small on a global scale. I tend to see trends long before they start affecting larger companies. Take the current economic downturn for example. I began to see the effects of the downturn on our product offerings back in late 2006. The news media only began to report on it in mid to late 2007.
Same thing with online advertising, back in the early 1990’s online advertising (at least for me) was a large part of my income. I consistently saw one to six percent (or higher) click-through rates on ads I sold on our websites. Today I see an average click-through rate of 0.75%. That is a bit above average but not much. It did not take long for consumers to figure out that banner advertising was simply an extension of television ads. Once the “paint” wore off so did the effectiveness of web advertising.
What I have learned is that I can still make money on my sites if I use subtle means to do so. I do not resort to annoying graphics or sales pitches. I let it happen naturally. I let others talk about the products and services that my company offers. I become involved with their conversations. I answer questions. I ask questions. I solve problems. I become involved.
Now if only the advertising industry would take off their rose-colored glasses and actually see what the Internet is actually about, then perhaps something good would happen in the advertising industry.
References
Arpanet - The ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) developed by DARPA of the United States Department of Defense, was the world's first operational packet switching network, and the predecessor of the global Internet. Wikipedia
Gopher - Gopher is a distributed document search and retrieval network protocol designed for the Internet. Its goal is to function as an improved form of Anonymous FTP, enhanced with hyperlinking features similar to that of the World Wide Web. Wikipedia
Veronica (Used with Gopher) - What is Veronica? Veronica is a software program used within Gopher (see Gopher handout) that searches Gopher menu titles throughout worldwide Gopherspace. Rather than move menu by menu through the hundreds of Gopher servers on the internet, you type in the word (or words) you are interested in and Veronica returns a list of Gopher menu items that match the terms of your search. University of Michigan
Jughead - see gopher wikipedia reference
Archie - Archie is a tool for indexing FTP archives, allowing people to find specific files. It is considered to be the first Internet search engine.[1] The original implementation was written in 1990 by Alan Emtage, Bill Heelan, and Peter J. Deutsch, then students at McGill University in Montreal. Wikipedia
WAIS - Wide Area Information Servers or WAIS is a client-server text searching system that uses the ANSI Standard Z39.50 Information Retrieval Service Definition and Protocol Specifications for Library Applications" (Z39.50:1988) to search index databases on remote computers. It was developed in the late 1980s as a project of Thinking Machines, Apple Computer, Dow Jones, and KPMG Peat Marwick. Wikipedia
IRC (Internet Relay Chat) - Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a form of real-time Internet chat or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for group (many-to-many) communication in discussion forums called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message and data transfers via Direct Client-to-Client. Wikipedia
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