Today pending housing sales were up in a surprise - and some equity traders feel it signals the tectonic shift from economic contraction to growth. I feel the same way about something different. Reading this I say, amidst the white noise of advertising recession, there are disparate groups assembing giving voice to a new era of online advertising.
I'm not talking about a battle between premium content sites vs ad networks or about whether online media is best suited for direct response vs branding - I'm talking about the very survival of the web media model that aggregates a specialized audience with content and then sells advertising space to marketers.
Here's my prediction - the opportunity for brand advertising, real demand generation advertising, online is in the past and in the future. The next five to ten years will see a decline in the value created - for both buyers and sellers. After that, the market for brand advertising online will begin to grow again. But, in the meantime, if you're a content website today, the revenue stream generated by brand (demand generation) advertising will dry up.
What? I'm not really that bright but here's what I see happening.
- Emergence of huge supplies of advertising inventory available via ad exchanges and ad networks
- Dozens of solutions continue to emerge to allow advertisers to find their customer in the midst of this huge supply
- Consumers spending time talking to one another via social media
- Brand marketers and the ad industry struggling with online media's market of conversations
Let me clearer. Online brand advertising for demand generation that comes in the form of paid display ads or sponsorships on web sites won't work. Online direct response advertising for demand fulfillment that comes in the form of paid display ads works and is only enhanced by targeting technologies working within huge supplies of ad impressions. So, the next 5 to 10 years will see continuing growth of direct marketing online, web sites will find themselves contributing their inventory (mostly) to some huge supply cloud and advertisers will be buying access to customers using targeting solutions not "content-as-a-proxy".
And online brand advertising for demand generation? That comes when brands figure out how to BECOME the conversation instead of sitting next to it as a display ad or sponsorship. And, if you think that commercialism can't be the conversation - then you don't live in the US or you haven't visited threadless. So who is going to break through with a revolutionary understanding of how to make the brand the conversation? Someone unknown to us today.
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