Will the Internet Become a Significant Advertising Medium?
Net Narcissism and Other Internet Hangovers
From: Robin D. Hafitz
To: Rishad Tobaccowala Posted Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2003, at 2:59 PM ETWho are these people?
Oh, Rishad.
The claim that I respectfully described as "a bit bogus" is that the Internet is the most addictive medium since television. That's like saying that "e" is the biggest thing to hit the alphabet since "d."
Whether true or not, it's lame. In fact, the whole "addiction" theme you're trying to mine here seems like a scenic detour. "Teenagers would rather give up food than Internet access." I'm sure they'd also become apoplectic if you took away their phones. "The more years people spend on the Net, the more time they spend on the Net." Not proof of "addiction," just of familiarity. And so what? If anything, pointing out that 18 percent of U.S. homes are responsible for 50+ percent of page views just underlines the point that Internet advertising can be a dangerous exercise in narrowcasting.
But, of course, as it becomes faster and easier more people will use it. As those of us with rural homes who can't get high-speed access via anything but satellite wait for the rain to stop, and people in my building on the Lower East Side who can't get Road Runner wait for our downloads to come in over the phone line, we'll comfort ourselves with that thought.
Addiction isn't relevant. People like their favorite media. They usually have more than one favorite. But an addiction contest between the Internet and other media will lead to the triumph of television. Television is the cocaine, the heroin, the after-work cocktail, and the chocolate bonbon of media, all rolled into one. An average of 7 hours and 47 minutes a day.
This addiction is nothing to be proud of, but there you have it.
The "push" vs. "pull" question is more relevant. And I agree with you that the Internet is a sparkling example of the consumer benefits of "pull." But most Internet advertisers still don't sell it that way. Most sell it like direct mail, and I've yawned through numerous meetings to that effect. They focus on counting things that may or may not actually lead to important ends like brand preference or purchase, simply because they can.
Don't confuse what I've said about Internet advertising with a vilification of the Internet as a medium. I love the medium. I personally raise the American average of time spent on the Internet. Much of that time (as is probably true for most people) is work-related, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate the truly unique and positive things it brings to work and to life.
And I actually love the Internet as an advertising venue. I recommend it to most clients—usually as part of an integrated media plan. But it's still working out some kinks. It's "evolving," as you so proudly noted. My main peeve is this: Just as my Internet clients two years ago were full of ridiculous overclaims about how their Web-based whatsit was going to alter the world as we know it, Internet ad sales tend to overclaim what the medium can and should be used for.
As media convergence becomes more of a reality, as I hope it will, I fully expect that Internet salespeople will demand the credit (as you put it "we'll take over the guts of all electronic media and advertising") like a smaller tribe intermarrying with a larger and claiming that the resultant generations are theirs and theirs alone. It's the most annoying hangover of the Internet era, Net Narcissism.
Robin D. Hafitz
Net Narcissism and Other Internet Hangovers
From: Robin D. Hafitz
To: Rishad Tobaccowala Posted Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2003, at 2:59 PM ETRishad Tobaccowala is president of SMG IP, an operating unit of Starcom MediaVest Group, which is one of the nation's largest communication companies. He has been selected by Time magazine as a leading marketing innovator and been elected to the Ad Age Interactive Hall of Fame. Robin D. Hafitz is co-chair of Mad Dogs & Englishmen, an award-winning advertising agency with offices in New York and San Francisco. She co-chairs the American Association of Advertising Agencies' committee on account planning, and serves on the board of the Account Planning Group US.
Remarks From The Fray:
The problem with Internet advertising, and what will continue to drive ad money away, is that the Internet makes it too easy to check your results. Most advertising is ignored by most people most of the time. Technology lets us quantify this to a depressing degree, so you can see that, say 99.5% of the people who see your ad completely ignore that.
Print mags should be grateful that advertisers can't check up on them like that.
-- boog
(To reply, click here.)
Idealistic hopes for the potential of the Internet as a "pull" medium will probably have to stay on the back burner for a while. Virtually all of the new Internet ad technologies I've seen have been devoted to coming up with new and more intrusive ways to get unwanted messages to people who don't want to hear them.
ONE: Kazaa now "features" obnoxious audio ads that will cut into the middle of your (admittedly pirated) music selection and shout "Hey! Click over here!" at a decibel level 50% higher than the average jet.
TWO(A): The authors of crap SPAM e-mails have honed their understanding of psychology to a razor's edge, and are actually getting quite good at disguising their crud as messages you might want to have a look at. My personal favorite (the first SPAM to take me in since college) was perfectly disguised as a "message undeliverable" error notification from a mail server.
TWO(B): Perhaps even more alarming, mainstream companies like (inter alia) Crest and J.C. Penney have gotten into the game, sending SPAM out under their corporate trademarks. Given the resources available to corporate America, this toe in the water could quickly turn into the internet equivalent of Leviathan sunning himself in your 3 year old's backyard wading pool.
THREE: That impossibly annoying Qwest T-Rex ad spawned a whole phylum of progeny. Proliferating beyond reason, they all have this in common: they're designed to force you to actually pay attention to them in order to figure out where you need to click to make them go away.
Sure. . . psychoexgirlfriend.com, Napster, All Your Base Are Belong To Us, Odd Todd, Libby Hoeler, and the Theban Mapping project are examples (of varying legitimacy, desirability, and effect) of the power of "pull" advertising to create "viral memes" that can suffuse the whole of culture damn near instantaneously. Any actual products attached to these sites would have been overnight sell-outs (yes, the play on words is intentional). . . unless, of course, the lack of crass commercialism is what made these sites so popular to begin with. (Well. . . okay . . . Napster and Libby Hoeler need no explanation; for the rest, then).
Long-Awaited Conclusion
What seems to be coming down the pike is an interesting mix. People's resourcefulness in detecting, avoiding, and retaliating for (see, e.g. my riff on the CloudMark idea for a humble proposition) crap Webvertising is on the rise; but people's vulnerabiliy to clever, noncommercial memes is at an all-time high.
Maybe we're going to see an age of advertisers evocative of the famous french "precious" movement, which held it unimaginably vulgar to say "chair" when you could say "place of half-repose", or tell someone that "It is night" when you could instead regale them with the intelligence that "the curtain of the sun's long dreaming has been drawn across the firmament of aster."
Who the hell knows? Speaking of transiently invincible memes, where's Suck.com when we need them? No doubt THEY could explain the whole schmeary mess to us in a heartbeat.
I dunno. Y'All THINK I'm selling half-arsed Internet commentary here. . . but I'm really selling shotguns! Star Poster hunting season starts in 5. . . . herbal viagra. . . . 4. . . . . Teens + Farm Animals = :-). . . . . 3 . . . . Let US Refinance your house!. . . .. 2. . . . Shotguns are available on e-Bay . . . . .1. . . . . I'm tied to a chair on the outskirts of Memphis. . . .
0.
-- Thrasymachus
(To reply, click here.)
Internet advertising didn't fail! In fact, it succeeded beyond anyone's wildest imagination. It singlehandedly proved that advertsing itself doesn't work anywhere near as well as anyone in the industry would have you believe.
-- Truthteller
(To reply, click here.)
But fundamentally, it's boring to listen to advertisers talk about the internet. To them, it's all a question of eyeballs... where will they pool, and what can we do to them when they get there? I suspect that the guess that, from an advertising perspective, the internet isn't particularly different from any other medium is likely true. Which is why it's tragic to participate in the internet from an advertising perspective.
They could at least be discussing INTERESTING episodes in the history of Internet advertisement (like the "game" that came out in advance of the movie A.I. which turned into one of the most oddball and stunning testaments to the crazy potential for new behaviors that I've ever seen)... not the virtue of "pop-up" ads vs. "lie-down" ads...
-- Geoff
(To reply, click here.)
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Remarks From The Fray:
The problem with Internet advertising, and what will continue to drive ad money away, is that the Internet makes it too easy to check your results. Most advertising is ignored by most people most of the time. Technology lets us quantify this to a depressing degree, so you can see that, say 99.5% of the people who see your ad completely ignore that.
Print mags should be grateful that advertisers can't check up on them like that.
-- boog
(To reply, click here.)
Idealistic hopes for the potential of the Internet as a "pull" medium will probably have to stay on the back burner for a while. Virtually all of the new Internet ad technologies I've seen have been devoted to coming up with new and more intrusive ways to get unwanted messages to people who don't want to hear them.
ONE: Kazaa now "features" obnoxious audio ads that will cut into the middle of your (admittedly pirated) music selection and shout "Hey! Click over here!" at a decibel level 50% higher than the average jet.
TWO(A): The authors of crap SPAM e-mails have honed their understanding of psychology to a razor's edge, and are actually getting quite good at disguising their crud as messages you might want to have a look at. My personal favorite (the first SPAM to take me in since college) was perfectly disguised as a "message undeliverable" error notification from a mail server.
TWO(B): Perhaps even more alarming, mainstream companies like (inter alia) Crest and J.C. Penney have gotten into the game, sending SPAM out under their corporate trademarks. Given the resources available to corporate America, this toe in the water could quickly turn into the internet equivalent of Leviathan sunning himself in your 3 year old's backyard wading pool.
THREE: That impossibly annoying Qwest T-Rex ad spawned a whole phylum of progeny. Proliferating beyond reason, they all have this in common: they're designed to force you to actually pay attention to them in order to figure out where you need to click to make them go away.
Sure. . . psychoexgirlfriend.com, Napster, All Your Base Are Belong To Us, Odd Todd, Libby Hoeler, and the Theban Mapping project are examples (of varying legitimacy, desirability, and effect) of the power of "pull" advertising to create "viral memes" that can suffuse the whole of culture damn near instantaneously. Any actual products attached to these sites would have been overnight sell-outs (yes, the play on words is intentional). . . unless, of course, the lack of crass commercialism is what made these sites so popular to begin with. (Well. . . okay . . . Napster and Libby Hoeler need no explanation; for the rest, then).
Long-Awaited Conclusion
What seems to be coming down the pike is an interesting mix. People's resourcefulness in detecting, avoiding, and retaliating for (see, e.g. my riff on the CloudMark idea for a humble proposition) crap Webvertising is on the rise; but people's vulnerabiliy to clever, noncommercial memes is at an all-time high.
Maybe we're going to see an age of advertisers evocative of the famous french "precious" movement, which held it unimaginably vulgar to say "chair" when you could say "place of half-repose", or tell someone that "It is night" when you could instead regale them with the intelligence that "the curtain of the sun's long dreaming has been drawn across the firmament of aster."
Who the hell knows? Speaking of transiently invincible memes, where's Suck.com when we need them? No doubt THEY could explain the whole schmeary mess to us in a heartbeat.
I dunno. Y'All THINK I'm selling half-arsed Internet commentary here. . . but I'm really selling shotguns! Star Poster hunting season starts in 5. . . . herbal viagra. . . . 4. . . . . Teens + Farm Animals = :-). . . . . 3 . . . . Let US Refinance your house!. . . .. 2. . . . Shotguns are available on e-Bay . . . . .1. . . . . I'm tied to a chair on the outskirts of Memphis. . . .
0.
-- Thrasymachus
(To reply, click here.)
Internet advertising didn't fail! In fact, it succeeded beyond anyone's wildest imagination. It singlehandedly proved that advertsing itself doesn't work anywhere near as well as anyone in the industry would have you believe.
-- Truthteller
(To reply, click here.)
But fundamentally, it's boring to listen to advertisers talk about the internet. To them, it's all a question of eyeballs... where will they pool, and what can we do to them when they get there? I suspect that the guess that, from an advertising perspective, the internet isn't particularly different from any other medium is likely true. Which is why it's tragic to participate in the internet from an advertising perspective.
They could at least be discussing INTERESTING episodes in the history of Internet advertisement (like the "game" that came out in advance of the movie A.I. which turned into one of the most oddball and stunning testaments to the crazy potential for new behaviors that I've ever seen)... not the virtue of "pop-up" ads vs. "lie-down" ads...
-- Geoff
(To reply, click here.)