Blogging from the Server Side

At the beginning of the month, Compendium CEO Chris Baggott wrote the following in a post on his blog:

Like so much of the web, it's broken by people and organizations that have tried to take a business model from the terrestrial world (wrap content in interruption advertising) and apply it in the online world. Granted, 100 years of experience in the Publishing/Advertising complex create very hard habits to break, but as the Demise of the Rocky Mountain News this past week shows us, the world is changing and changing quickly.

I thought about those words as I read a post published this afternoon by Dawn Kawamoto at the CNet Digital Media blog. The story detailed how several online publishers are planning to roll out new online ads this summer, and the size of these ads will occupy more space than existing ads. Quoting directly from Kawamoto's post:

The move by online publishers comes at a time when the economy is in a recession and advertisers are pulling back on their spending.

"Agencies are looking for new ways to integrate their clients' brand experiences with more interactivity on the page, and these new units provide a way for them to accomplish this," said Pam Horan, (Online Publishers Association) president, said in a statement.

I saw a screen shot of one of the ads, and I can't imagine these things being well received by site visitors. The advertising dinosaurs are trying to adapt by doing more of the same -- interruption based messages -- only on a bigger scale.

Why am I so skeptical? It comes down to the reason the visitor came to the site in the first place. They are there to read some content. "Experiencing a brand with more interactivity" sounds like a big dose of interruption to me. People are voting with their eyeballs and mouses, and yelling louder isn't going to stem that tide.

Rather than placing your bets on annoying your customer, why not consider humanizing your marketing message? Blog

Comments for Are the Advertising Dinosaurs Adapting?

Wednesday, March 11, 2009 by Chris Baggott:: PJ, this is a brilliant find, and you are exactly right. The old brand world is desperatly trying to hang on to a world that has moved on. "Experience the Brand with More Interactivity.." LOL I almost spit coffee out my nose when I read that quote :-)