Matter, Energy, and Life of Michaela A. Castello.

Seeing Past the Banner Ad


Crosbie Fitch added some good insights in response to my previous post about web advertising, noting that the internet is returning balance to communication, changing effective advertising strategies from monologues to dialogues. In addition to basking in the knowledge that he reads my site, I’d like to riff on his post a bit and look more closely at post-unidirectional advertising.

A Robust Relationship

When bidirectional communication between producer and customer is strong, the best advertising is being known for producing quality products, services, or content. When trying to achieve the first two, a robust relationship with customers is invaluable. As Crosbie pointed out, the internet creates opportunities for direct communication between the two parties. With two-way communication, companies are able to use the same advertising dollars they would have spent on media “blasts” and spread it around to more localized places. If they are able to engage their communities they can ditch the expensive consultants and sterile focus groups, instead improving their offerings through immediate and honest feedback from actual customers.

To that end, a tech company might have an interest in supporting a blogger or community website. They can work to produce products that the community will organically promote simply because they’re satisfied. Of course, this is different than paying people to disseminate thinly disguised promotional messages, an ongoing scandal plaguing the gaming industry.

Quality Content

There’s also the idea of producing quality content, which can be done even without being a member of the “content industry” itself. Supporting ongoing projects or paying people to produce new things reflects positively on the business: Creating something people link to on YouTube or share via BitTorrent is tremendously superior to assaulting a numbed population with “marketing messages,” the tuning out of which has become so routine, our technology has evolved to do it for us.

A great example of this strategy in action I’ve seen lately is I Love Local Commercials. The company MicroBilt pays a duo of creative filmmakers to create free, humorous local advertisements for small businesses, drawing attention to their own services. It’s a winning situation all around: The internet gets fun, popular, and freely sharable content, filmmakers get a job, small businesses get attention, and everybody is exposed to MicroBilt’s service offerings. Note also how in this situation, the free sharing of the content (the videos) works to everybody’s benefit, no copyright or other nonsense required.

Information Asymmetry

Usage of software like Adblock will only increase with the swelling ranks of internet users refusing to leave their homepage without eliminating the waiting phalanx of banner ads. As the internet continues to enervate one-way marketing, the industries and businesses that will be demolished are those that thrive on information asymmetry; disingenuous organizations hoping that enough media penetration will allow them to bleed off some cash before their customers realize they’ve been swindled. And to that I agree with director Sam Bozzo—good riddance.


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3 responses to “Seeing Past the Banner Ad”

  1. […] posted here: Seeing Past the Banner Ad | mistypedURL Comments […]

  2. […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Michael Castello, Michael Castello. Michael Castello said: New post: Seeing Past the Banner Ad http://mistypedurl.com/2010/06/seeing-past-the-banner-ad/ […]

  3. […] You deserve nothing; the only person to blame for a failing business model is yourself. There is still a vibrant future in web advertising even as the simplistic method of plastering a site with images loses relevance. […]

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