Joe’s angle on marketing news you can use.Some execs believe social space is the real new media
August 4th, 2008 by Joe MeleTags: Google, Microsoft, new media, Social Media
Is banner advertising old media? Is user generated content the real future?
Picture: peswiki.com
Article excerpt: Google, Microsoft and other Web players may be wasting precious time and resources trying to dominate the display ad segment of the Web when the real ad potential may be in the user-generated, social media sphere, according to this article. “Advertising ought to be designed to support the social-media program, because the tip of the marketing spear ought to be the consumer-generated-media piece,” said Mark Haas Hass, CEO of Publicis Groupe’s Manning Selvage & Lee.
The rest: adage.com
Musing: I have lots and lots of problems with this article, and my first reaction is that it was written by a media traditionalist who knows little about digital. But, I am wrong. Abbey Klaassen is Advertising Age’s digital editor, and she seems to know a thing or two about digital (despite the fact that one of her lines in the article is “For all its glory, the internet still has not proven itself capable of being a primary branding medium. Most ads online are response-based and work best for brand marketers when they complement a branding campaign in other media.” – pure drivel). Upon reflection, I think my real issue with the article is that it just misses the point completely. What online advertising is not missing is better targeting (it offers actual user targeting rather than estimates) or better metrics (it offers actual data rather than estimates), but more creative thinking when it comes to how to produce good advertising. Banner ads are part of the mix, but they are not innovative per se. Neither are TV commercials. What digital advertising needs can be found in the P&G article above – how do brands create engaging experiences with consumers? Those can be banner ads, websites, widgets, search terms, or print ads. More money will come to digital when brands and ad agencies figure out how to leverage the medium, not make it more like traditional.
