Staying Ahead of the Media Steamroller
Can you imagine how simple advertising was at the turn of the last century? Let’s see, you have newspapers, magazines, billboards, and that stunning technological innovation of catalog mail-order.
Even the 20th century was pretty managable. Until those last few crazy years, our big new media experiences were in radio and television.
But, with every new medium comes new opportunities for communication. Did you know the first spam message was sent in 1978, by DEC? Or that the first banner ad ran in 1994? Or that blog networks are now accepting streaming video ads?
And, no matter if you look online or off, you’re seeing media opportunities like you’ve never seen before. Consider:
• Painting the top of your building to advertise on Google maps
• A company in Japan just launched point-of-purchase displays using electronic paper for animated display–available now, starting at $30
• Advertising via graffiti, stickering and hand stamps, like Sony’s PSP campaign
• Google is planning a vast, trackable advertising network that includes all kinds of media, online and off
• Printable barcodes can now be made dense enough to store video—that’s right, pass a piece of paper through a reader, and watch a short commercial
• They’ve even developed interactive, heat-activated urinal advertising (you can’t make this stuff up)
The upshot? Every conversation about “advertising” becomes exponentially more complex. Today, when a client comes to us to talk about “online advertising–you know, just ads, not keywords or any of that other stuff,” we have to talk about:
• First tier sites
• Second tier networks
• Blog networks
• Audience-specific single sites
• Rich media
• In-stream video
• Contextually-matched text ads
• Analysis of site traffic re keywords
And half a dozen I don’t remember off the top of my head.
The media steamroller is here. Staying ahead of it requires that you know where your audience is, what they’re likely to respond to, and how they’re already acting on your site. Metrics drive strategy, and strategy drives results. And that’s what keeps you ahead of the steamroller.
Until next time,
Jason Stoddard
www.centric.com
