Hey, Marketers, Here’s How To Stop Worrying And Love The Internet!

David Gillespie’s Digital Strangelove (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Internet)

Hate Advertising? Get over it.

It’s not going away – much of the internet’s revenue is from Ads
As I understand it, 85% of Google’s revenue in the past has been from online advertising. Contextual Ad sense is Advertising, sure it’s not the annoying “punch a monkey” type of advertising, but it’s still advertising. I predict Google will start to do this with video in the near future, it’s certainly not going away.

We hate shotguns
Advertising is a shotgun approach, and sadly that means that innocents are subjected to the chaff. Advertising messages are often (or should be) targeted at a specific group or demographic, when we’re subjected to advertising that’s not aimed at us, we often don’t like it or try to screen it out.

We love lasers
When Advertising is focused and hits the right target, not unlike a laser, it hits home and resonates. Advertising becomes part of our culture, and people start to talk about (that’s a conversation) from Budd-wise-er, to Got Milk. We hate advertising when its not for us, but in the rare times that it’s on the mark, it resonates with us, and becomes part of us. This can apply for text ads, mobile, ads, and most importantly, contextual ads.

Even though we don’t like it, advertising works
Advertising works. In business school, you’re taught that 11-13 impressions of a brand (often advertising) will cause the prospect to be highly likely to try or purchase the product. This is a deep rooted human, psychological, and sociological instinct that’s difficult to ignore.

The Future
Is it possible for products to be adopted by people without word-of-mouth networks? Absolutely. Is it possible for both to co-exist? Advertising online will become more targated, the advanced media buyers will shift to sponosorships, and technology will allow us to triangulate data online, and using mobile devices like never seen before. If done right, there will be more lasers than shotguns.

Online Advertising will evolve, as will word of mouth, conversations, and communities too. Let’s evolve with it.

Social Network Spending to Increase

Social Networks continue to show a strong future of growth.  A very obvious trend for both of these reports is the growth of budgets by marketers and companies for social networks.

I’m not releasing any new information here, but just highlighting the public data that they both point out:

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Social technology marketers bullish in face of recession

We polled interactive marketers with the following question: “Assuming that the economy is in a recession in the next six months, how would you change your Investments in the following marketing channels?” Over 40% of them indicated that they will increase spending on social networks even in face of a recession during the next 6 months.

Josh writes: “Social networks will get the largest number of increases, over 40% of those using it, along with user-generated content, blogs, and that old standby, email marketing.”

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Forecast: Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Spend By Technology, 2007 To 2013

In Oliver Young’s report on Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Market Forecast: 2007 To 2013 and the graph has been published on Read Write Web and ZDnet, Enterprise spending of social computing software (internal and external) his report provided some clear forecasts demonstrating that purchasing in social networking software (like this white label list) will increase, and take the largest segment of the budget.

Small Business Web Marketing

Small business’s realize that what happens on the web may impact customers. For example, restaurants that don’t create their own website will often have a review site (like yelp, chowhound, or yahoo reviews) be the top listed site for their business.

Here’s a few resources:

Make sure your website shows exactly what you site does, address information, contact info. Download Squad has 10 tips for small businesses. I’ve also suggested to friends with restaurants to consider using pictures of their restaurant and food. But again, contact info should go right up on first page, as users are often seeking how to get to your establishment.

SF Gate has some suggestions on search strategies, well narrow ones at that. By staying focused, your small business may have an opportunity in beating out larger companies in your region.

I’ve also started to notice that there are more cafe’s and restaurants live streaming their establishment. Often, these bustling small companies may benefit from showing the world they are hub’s of energy and activity.

Small businesses may also benefit from finding other online communities and connecting with peers, partners, or customers. I’ve heard some several folks that Intuit’s Quickbooks has a thriving online community for small businesses.

Lastly, check out Duct Tape Marketing blog, which has a constant stream of high quality content.

Online advertising continues to grow, mainstream media bleeding (42% online vs -3% traditonal)

THe Internet Outsider demonstrates the formula most of us have already figured out, the web is causing a shift in advertising dollars (although not the most important attribute, but a key indicator to what’s changing)

“US advertising revenue at 4 big online media companies–Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), AOL (TWX), and MSN (MSFT)–grew by $1.3 billion in Q2, or 42%.

US advertising revenue at 15 big television, newspaper, magazine, radio, and outdoor companies (Time Warner, Viacom, CBS, etc.) shrank by $280 million in Q2, or 3%.”

42% online vs -3% traditional
Read the bottom line on this spreadsheet analysis. Google is growing hand over fist at 96% while NYT has a decrease by 6%.

Quite interesting that mainstream media would suggest that other factors were to blame such as the “real estate market” or “cyclical weakness.” Take a step back, look at how your kids are communicating, and see the forest.

When is the tipping point of advertising dollars being heavier online than on mainstream media? Collective research indicates 2011.