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| Advertisers: It's Not Business as Usual |
| Those pushing products on the Net are failing to grasp fundamental market changes |
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George Matafonov (geomat)  |
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Published 2005-06-21 16:03 (KST) |
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While George Lucas, once again, has us spellbound with his epic tale of the forces of light battling the forces of the dark side, a real-life battle of similar proportions is about to begin as Adblock, the Jedi of the Internet, attempts to take back the net from the clutches of the advertisers and the moneymen and restore the original vision of the Internet as place where people meet, talk, exchange ideas and knowledge without being constantly yelled at by advertisers. But this is not a storm in a teacup, the implications and repercussions are nothing short of revolutionary.
 |  | | | | | | ©2005 G. Matafonov | Adblock is an extension of the Firefox browser. Once installed, Adblock does what its name implies; it blocks all those flashing and annoying ads efficiently and effortlessly. Great if you hate ads flashing and screaming at you, but it is not good news if you run a Web site that is dependant on advertising revenue. In fact, if the Firefox/Adblock combination becomes the dominant browser combination, the business model which underpins much of how the Internet delivers free content will potentially come under threat, not to mention an estimated $12 billion dollars in ad revenue. All the predictions of an online advertising bonanza suddenly become less believable.
At the moment, Firefox holds only about 10 percent of the browser market, but its market share has been steadily growing since its launch in November, 2004. To date, the browser has been downloaded over 64 million times, but the Adblock extension has only been downloaded about 2 million times. So it would seem that the threat to the online advertising bonanza is only minor. But it would be premature for the advertising industry to celebrate just yet, because a number of forces are about to converge.
Firstly, consumer resistance is rising. According to a 2004 report by Yankelovich, a marketing consultancy firm, the growing intrusiveness of marketing and advertising has led to a saturated marketplace pushing consumer resistance to an all-time high, and effectively reducing the return on investment to the advertisers.
The report highlights included:
59 percent feel that most marketing and advertising has very little relevance to them
64 percent are concerned about practices and motives of marketers and advertisers
61 percent feel that marketers and advertisers don't treat consumers with respect
65 percent think there should be more limits and regulations on marketing and advertising
69 percent are interested in products and services that would help them skip or block marketing
33 percent would be willing to have a slightly lower standard of living to live in a society without marketing and advertising.
The response of the advertisers and marketers to date has been to up the ante: more ads which are becoming more intrusive, more invasive, louder and sometimes even resorting to shock tactics in order to grab attention. All this is clearly counterproductive and self-defeating.
In a speech at last year's American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA) Conference in Miami, Yankelovich President J. Walker Smith warned:
"Marketers haven't done a lot to create positive views of their industry, but they've done many things - unwanted spam and telemarketing, guerilla marketing, intrusive ads covering every blank space and less targeted, less informational communications - that create more negative views. It's time for marketers to focus their business models on how to better deliver the kind of marketing that consumers really want, instead of assuming that consumers are happy with fending off a daily deluge of marketing. The era of consumer resistance and control has begun."
But consumers are not only starting to resist advertisers by ignoring them, they now have tools to shut them out. Adblock is just one of a raft of new technologies which puts controls in their hands. Digital video recorders provides viewers with the ability to skip ads altogether. In the same way, digital radio recorders will enable listeners to record just the sections and music they like, skipping not only the ads but also the mundane chatter.
The traditional yelling at consumers may be on the ropes, but the advertisers are keen to exploit the new technologies using techniques such as product placement combined with "telescoping" where the viewer is enticed into clicking on a link to see an advertisement. For example, you could be watching some movie where a character uses the latest Palm Pilot, a link would appear on the screen which, when clicked, would provide all the details of the Palm Pilot, including the ability to buy directly. While the advertisers may be excited by this, the blurring of the distinction between promotion and entertainment is seen by many as another example that business and advertisers still just don't get it -- it's not business as usual.
This was point was made back in 1999 in the book, The Cluetrain Manifesto, which proclaimed:
"We are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. We are human beings--and our reach exceeds our grasp. In the book, reminiscent of the legend of Luther nailing his 95 theses to the church in Wittenberg, are 95 theses of the Information Age. And the first was the most important for business to understand -- markets are [now] conversations."
According to the authors, the problem is that business, is failing to understand that a fundamental change has occurred. Made possible by the new communication technologies, people are connecting in different ways for their information needs, which has resulted in a global conversation. And nowhere is the failure to understand this point more evident than in advertising and marketing.
In other words, while in the age of information markets have become conversations, the advertisers and marketers still follow the Industrial Age model of treating markets as demographics to be manipulated.
"Imagine having a private conversation but, in the background, you have someone continuously yelling at you about some product you either have no interest in, or not interested at the moment. Unless you are endowed with the patience of Job, you will probably tell that person to shut up," said David Mills, co-founder of www.global-moveon.org.
And this brings us to the key point. While the stimulus was the advances in the communication technologies, the change is in people's perceptions. It's like living next door to a railway line, after a while you stop noticing the trains rattling by. But one day you learn that the railway company has the technology to stop the noise but won't do it. Suddenly the noise becomes unbearable. In the same way, the advertising noise is becoming unbearable.
As part of a broad campaign an end to the Industrial Age mentality, www.global-moveon.org is running a campaign called It's Over! and one of the key aims of this campaign is to send a message to business and to their advertisers that it is not business as usual. But rather than relying on technology to block out the advertisers, the campaign strikes at the very heart of the matter by calling on people to boycott mass advertisers. According to the campaign:
All forms of mass advertising are considered as pollution of the mind. Each advertisement pollutes the mind like an open sewer pollutes the environment.
Any business using mass advertising is stuck in an Industrial Age mentality: lazy, inconsiderate, inefficient and should be avoided.
In practice, every time you see or hear a commercial on television, radio, newspaper, magazine, bus, taxi, T-shirt, banner or billboard immediately think of the words, "It's Over!" and then register your protest at the cash register by refusing to buy that product, until the advertising ceases. In fact, if you are able, swap brands and then register your protest with the supplier.
When you are choosing between products and services, choose the one that you do not recall being advertised.
Wherever possible avoid becoming a human billboard (Humbie), by not wearing and using branded products. Help others break their addiction to being "humbies."
Never respond to any unsolicited snail mail, spam, Internet banner ads, or telemarketing. In fact, do the opposite. Not only not respond, but also actively avoid the product or service being advertised or promoted.
"The only way to get the advertisers out of their Industrial Age mentality, is to help them understand that their current practices will ultimately hurt their branding," said Mills. "While they can outlaw ad-blocking technology, they can't outlaw a direct boycott."
Anyway you look at it the message to the advertisers and the marketers is simple -- it is not business as usual, so deal with it. To those who rely on advertising revenue, it is time rethink business models because the repercussions extend further than just ad revenue, they may just end the Industrial Age way of doing business.
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©2005 OhmyNews
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