WebWord

I saw a show on the CBS Sunday Morning show today called Cutting Through Advertising Clutter. There were a number of very interesting comments made that’ll share with you in a moment.

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This will be a meandering brain dump of ideas
based on my notes while watching the show
this morning. Please excuse my lack of
proper editing and analysis.

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Nothing surprised me regarding the ways that advertisers are advertising, but I was a bit surprised by some of the attitudes and comments of advertisers. Their frame of mind and frame of reference is quite different than mine.

One advertiser stated that people don’t hate advertising, they hate bad advertising. I suppose this is true. For example, I think the Google ads on WebWord are useful and valid, otherwise I certainly would not run them. I feel that they are actually content that WebWord readers enjoy, but perhaps I’m wrong. Tell me if it bothers you.

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Is Google Advertising Evil?

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According to CBS, in the 1970’s the average person saw about 500 advertisements per day. And in the Golden Age of Television, the big three networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) could reach 70 percent of the viewing audience. That means you. Now people are bombed with about 5,000 advertisements per day. That’s quite a leap.

What we’re seeing is ad creep, where advertisements bleed into more and more environments. More advertisements are being placed in places that were once taboo. For example, there are now urinal cakes that talk to men when urine hits them.

We’re already seeing this advertising assault is being ignored by people. We’re seeing banner blindness in the real world. To break through, advertisers feel that they need to be bigger, louder, and more invasive. It is an arms race. The more they bombard people, the more people ignore, so the more they bombard.

Advertisers wish to cut through the clutter but not alienate the audience they are trying to reach. Advertisers work inside an old school paradigm where they compete with other advertisers for our time. They think push. Push, push, push.

To this end, a couple of the analysts on the CBS show stated that to win, advertisers needed to be outrageous. They needed extreme creativity. This war is a war for attention, which translates to action in the form of spending. Advertisers wish to influence people so that they in turn spend their money.

But is this advertising paradigm the right paradigm? Do advertisers need to rethink their approach in light of the new media available? Do they need to look at the power shift from big companies to end users and consumers.

Of course.

Advertisers need to think about providing value beyond entertainment and push of information. They need to think about user control and the ways that users want to pull what they want to pull, when they want to pull it.

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Below you’ll see that I point to a couple
of my own web sites. I just wanted to
be very open about that. I’m not trying
to fool or trick anyone.  These sites are
just good examples for me to use.  :-)

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I’ll provide an example. I could spend money on advertising Pet Comfort Products, which is one of my side ventures, on Google or Overture. Instead, I spend nearly all my time and energy on writing articles and updating the site. Google picks up the content and exposes it to users when they search for free. And, this kind of “advertising” is free month after month. Instead of pushing advertising and my message, I create value, expose it, and let users find it.

I’ll dive on this a little deeper. I spend a lot of time looking at search terms the users use to find Pet Comfort Products. In light of this, I’ve written several articles that would have never crossed my mind. I’m looking at the demand from users and I try to offer up what they want versus trying to force anything on them. Here are some examples of articles that are driven by user demand:

• 10 Ways to Dress Up Your Dog With Pet Clothing
• 20 Reasons Why Dogs Eat Poop
• How to Give Your Pet a Pill: 15 Outstanding Tips
• Dog Tongue Sticking Out and Other Mysteries Explained

My point is that these articles didn’t just pop in my head. Also, I didn’t go out of my way to advertise them in any traditional way. I simply looked at my search logs and I took some questions from readers. The results come in the form of interesting and valuable articles that will pull in people for months, if not years. (Old WebWord articles still pull in many thousands reader per year.)

I’ve been building another similar “experimental” site with some colleagues called Stretch Mark Remedy. We do not plan on doing any advertising on this laser focused web site whatsoever. Instead, we’ve told people about the site, we’ve offered up free advice in discussion forums, and we’re writing valuable articles. We’ve also focused on a very narrow topic so that we can dive deeply for our readers. Let me restate: We’re not doing any traditional advertising for Stretch Mark Remedy. We’re not spending any money to push a message to people. It’s all word of mouth and organic.

Now, I admit that I’m discussing both Pet Comfort Products and Stretch Mark Remedy here, which seems like advertising. But, it’s really more a matter of marketing. I’m doing my best in this post to some valuable advice. My web sites are valuable examples. They demonstrate how it is done.

Some folks will see that I’m not doing advertising at all. Instead, I’m doing marketing. That’s the key. (Yes, there is a difference between advertising and marketing.) You pay for advertising and you push a message.  With marketing, you use a variety of tools to bring people and resources together for a common goal, and to make exchanges.

The message is that you want to generate value and help people. On the web, I very strongly feel that creating excellent content is the key. That will generate traffic. The search engines will love you and people will love you. Everyone wins without spending money pushing a message or attempting to cut through any clutter. Competition with advertisers is a moot point. I say, let them fight it out because people are going to continue to get better and better at being blind to the assault.

Let’s wrap it up. At the end of the CBS show, there was an interesting factoid:

Proctor and Gamble spends 4.61 billion per year on advertising.

What would happen if P&G spent just 10% of that generating excellent content and helping people? I would bet that it would be more valuable than advertising, but maybe I’m just one silly guy with several high traffic, high value web sites.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 17th, 2006 at 11:01 am and is filed under Usability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.