Predicament with Internet Advertising

In any particular TV audience, only a few will have an immediate need or interest in the product being advertised. This is why every television commercial is, to some degree, a mixture of substance and amusement. The television audience is willing to view irrelevant content as long as it is entertaining enough.

But on the Web, we are purposeful.

Viewing irrelevant content, entertaining or otherwise, is antithetical to the reasons we are there. And yet Internet advertising keeps resorting to the challenge in the way that worked in the past. It gets more creative. Banner ads deliver games. Pop-ups respond to blockers by becoming "floaters." The industry prays for greater broadband adoption so television commercials can be streamed online. In advertising, traditionally, great creative could always come to the rescue.

Now think about the last time you went to Google. Do you remember advertising? Probably not. There are no banners, pop-ups, images, or animations. The advertising is totally unremarkable, uncreative and uninteresting and yet Google is very successful at selling advertising. Google strives for relevance. It serves an ad only when it knows something about your interest. That's why there's no advertising on the home page. Google met the essential challenge, How to advertise without bothering their customers? By adapting to, rather than fighting, the use of the medium. They accepted that audiences want to be in control of their experience while exploiting a new advantage. They know what their customers are looking for and looking at.

While contextual placement is only one way of adapting to the medium, it suggests a broader implication for the future of advertising on the Web: if all advertising is a mixture of entertainment and relevance, then online, the balance must shift to relevance.

Online people demand control and control, after all, is really just about getting what you want -- and only what you want.