

Online advertising is now dead - bootload
http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/11/13/onlineAdvertisingIsNowDead.html

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tptacek
The other day, Dave Winer broke his Cuisinart coffee machine and was, within 5
minutes, able to replace it on Amazon. Therefore, online advertising is now
dead.

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mattmaroon
Also, he put annoying # images after every paragraph.

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unalone
I frankly wanted to link to his p5. I am very grateful that he allowed me to
do so. I didn't know I wanted to link to p5 until he showed me that it was
available.

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mattmaroon
Ha, I didn't realize those were anchors. I just found the image annoying.

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jfornear
I was expecting a more thought out post from such a strong title.

I don't think it makes sense to support this argument by correlating the value
of advertising with the health of the economy or whatever he was trying to do.
He should have left the economy out of the equation if he wanted a stronger
case.

I would argue that online advertising will become more and more accurate with
its targeting methods, which in turn will raise its value as opposed to
destroying it.

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jerf
I believe he has made the point before that at the ultimate extreme of
targeted advertising... it's not advertising anymore, it's just providing you
with a product you want. Which his example is an example of; information so
targeted that it goes beyond being an "ad".

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unalone
That's silly. It's still within the scope of advertising.

Question: does a company like Cuisinart have to pay to list their product in
Amazon?

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strlen
Display advertising had been dying a slow and painful death for quite a while
now. CTRs for banners are lower and lower. Yet when I see ads on weblogs, on
Myspace and Facebook it still strikes me how much of this advertising is still
just display ads.

At the end of the last boom Overture (purchased by Yahoo in 2003, right as the
economy began to emerge from the bust) and later Google brought us a new form
of advertising which didn't even look like advertising to begin with: search
advertising. Overture's original goal was "sponsored search": the more you bid
for a term, the more relevant should the term be in search results.

Perhaps with this bubble dying a new form of advertising will emerge or has
_already emerged_ \- which we won't initially (or can't yet) identify as
advertising.

Brand advertising too has less of a future on the web: search advertising
(especially with Google and their consideration of relevance of the ad and not
just the bid value - something which didn't exist in Overture's model until
Yahoo's Project Panama) enabled the "little guy", the local small businesses,
the webmasters to sell their products to an audience that was looking to them.

It's folly too say "all that can invented [in advertising] is already
invented". Traditional PPI/PPC banner/display advertising is drying up and
rightly so (it encouraged a reductionist thinking, treating users as captive
"eye balls" as opposed to customers of a product; it encouraged mee-too
copycat websites which called themselves "start-ups"). Yet I wouldn't be quick
to discount the possibility of something entirely different taking its place.

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Jasber
As long as attention is a limited resource people will be willing to pay for
it. As long as people are willing to pay for attention (eye-balls) there will
be advertising.

Perhaps not in its current form (banner ads, text links) but I don't see this
going away anytime soon. I generally don't agree with Winer but his pieces are
usually more thought out than this.

I agree with other commenters that bringing up the economy weakened his
argument. I'm no economist but when times are touch elasticity and neccessity
have a lot to do with what people spend money on.

Advertising is elastic and not a neccessity, its generally a means to grow
your business. People are not worried about growing their business in a
recession, they're worried about staying alive.

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kqr2
I think a lot of advertising is subliminal, especially branding.

Coke bombards you with ads because it wants to promote coke as part of your
lifestyle. If you don't click on their ad banner right now, that's fine.
You're more likely to recognize coke though at the grocery store.

The article also doesn't take into account that advertising is not static.
Like a cat and mouse game, it evolves as its audience evolves.

In the future, advertising may be more "guerilla" or underground. Also,
advertising has the capability to go "viral" now. In a matter of days, they
can spread a meme across the internets. :-)

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kajecounterhack
"Also, advertising has the capability to go "viral" now. In a matter of days,
they can spread a meme across the internets. :-)"

True, but a lot easier said than done, haha.

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breck
Even if the logic here made sense, there are about 50 billion data points a
year ($$$) that beg to disagree. Data trumps arguments always.

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MrRage
> Data trumps arguments always.

I wish that was always true.

~~~
stcredzero
Facts always trump arguments in the end. The problem is that we may not always
like the end.

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fallentimes
I hate link bait articles like this. Even if the article ends up being good,
the title is such a click deterrent for me.

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josefresco
Me too, but look ... 37 comments including mine. Sad.

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jrockway
I don't think advertising is dead for everyone, only people like him. I am
rarely influenced by ads. I want something, I read reviews, I shop around, I
buy it. Not good for advertisers.

However, most people don't care that much and will take the first thing that
looks shiny to them. Advertising is a great way to make people look at shiny
things, and I think it will remain profitable as a result.

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Hexstream
"But I chose this brand of coffee maker because people who had one really
liked it, and the other brands, their users didn't like them so much."

Well, lots of ads say or infer that people who have X really liked it. I think
marketers just hope you'll get your memory confused over whether you heard
real people say they liked it or whether it was a more or less obvious ad.

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jeffa107
The more niched your content, the less accurate that statement becomes.

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dkasper
Maybe we're getting closer to a time when advertising is not an instant
revenue source for any site generating lots of traffic, but companies aren't
going to stop wanting to get their name in front of people. Therefore: sites
wanting to monetize through ads = maybe dead in the future. Online advertising
= far from dead.

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Tichy
I think that Google is competing with itself. After all, suppose Google
succeeds in building the perfect search engine, that always finds exactly what
you are looking for. In that case, it seems as if there would be no place left
for advertising (certainly not what we see today, with ads looking almost like
the first search result).

However, maybe there will still be advertising, we'll just call it
differently.

Or it will just be the "people who liked x also liked y" thing. For example,
if someone googles for a coffee maker, he gets to see ads for coffee. I am
pretty sure Google already does this.

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jmtame
Online advertising is just an abstraction to describe a very large and broad
set of activities: getting large corporations (and even small businesses) to
promote their products to potential buyers. It is the corporate instinct to
drive up demand for products. This activity cannot be shaken by any recession
and will forever be a source of income for those who hold the attention of an
audience.

As long as consumers exist, advertising will always serve as a platform for
manufacturing demand.

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CGL
Well, I think it's sure to piss off a lot of companies building shaky business
models off ads that no body clicks on (and that is happening), but I do think
this is a bit over the top.

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sh1mmer
I think Mr Winer forgets the element of competition. Advertising is not just
about highlighting good products it's also teaching consumers to pick your
good products over your competitor's good product.

Is generic Ibuprofen different from Advil? I think not.

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ntoshev
Online advertising changes. Product ads are headed towards blending with
recommendation engines (this is what the whole "targeting" is about), branding
ads can stay where they are or (more likely) go in the directions of "your
friends like X".

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snewe
Advertising will continue to live as long as their is imperfect information
and tastes that can be branded. Hate these titles so much.

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abl
Advertising forgotten after the economy makes a comeback? Try telling that to
Google right after the economy picked up post-911!

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jonknee
Frontier has been dead for five years, but that hasn't stopped Dave. To say
he's out of touch is an understatement.

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swombat
Online advertising is dead. FreeBSD is dead. Lisp is dead. Linux is dead.
Windows is dead.

 _yawn_

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sahaj
this is a popular position to take now that the big G has fallen below $300.

until you can tell me what the <viable> alternative is, ads aren't going
anywhere.

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shabda
SEO is dead. Advertising is dead. Linkbait is living.

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jyrzyk
Online advertising: "I just work hard."

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lindo_rohan
I do not agree advertising is dead but it has changed from a impressions and
click based model to new performance basis cost per action model

