While I am not an advertising expert, it is something that has crossed paths many many times, enough to make me think about it independently. And even if more of a technical person, I do get dragged in discussions about current trends. Let me also warn you that this is more of a freewheeling thought, so expect randomness in this post.
Most of our communication media are following the free content and advertising model. Newspapers, TV channels, radio, and more recently the Web as well. It is a win-win situation, as you do not have to pay for the information you want. What you pay with is your attention to something that gets the revenue going. And that something, more often than not, takes form of advertisements.
With everyone going for it, and everyone grooming their content and content delivery, it is not surprising that even the advertisement field is seeing competition. I believe the competition will get tighter in future, and might make enough difference to make one side victorious. Quality of advertisements will matter. And I think an improved quality will mean that the difference between the main content and the advertisements will start decreasing. By this logic, the best advertisement will not be an advertisement anymore, but the content itself. As Dave Winer says:
“Advertising will get more and more targeted until it disappears, because perfectly targeted advertising is just information.”
But I wonder if this will work, the difference is necessary for you and me. The difference might not be in the actual text, it might be in the intent. It is more like friction, we try to reduce it as much as possible to go faster, but we will fail to even move if we completely eliminate it.
Will this also mean that the advertising delivery mechanisms will have to be closely integrated with the content delivery? Today’s contextual advertising is hardly anywhere near this. It is anything but contextual. The context is known best to the reader, and maybe in future it is the reader will choose the advertisements to be shown, neither the publisher nor the broker.
