The death of advertising authenticity
In the old days, you could take out a quarter page ad in the newspaper and become more legitimate. Some people would open their morning paper and see your logo and message next to the most reputable word about what's happening. Your ad would sit next to ones by trusted brands like Macy's, Cadillac and Fidelity. Ads cost a lot of money, because newspapers had costs they had to cover. Prices remained high because the newspaper controlled page count. There were finite resources, so supply and demand applied.
Today, if you take out a display ad on the Internet, you're likely to see ads for punch-the-monkey, colon cleansing, and Acai Berry scams. Ads cost nothing because of an infinite supply of untargeted display space on the web. And so if you take that ad in the wasteland of low-trust brands, you will become less legitimate. Attention transforms into a very free-form resource. This comes directly out of the hypertext nature of the web. I can go in any direction and find any information at a moment's notice. I am not shackled to one set of newsprint sitting in front of me. When you take away those limitations, my attention can go to whatever is most interesting or most fit at that moment. When attention becomes unshackled, we expect good stories and good products to come to us. That's how mint.com got huge without spending a single dime on traditional or online advertising. Great products and great services grow organically. Nobody will ever tell their friends about that AWESOME punch the monkey scams and colon cleansing scams they participated in. As a result, authenticity can no longer be purchased. It must be earned.You should follow me on twitter here.
9 comments
But: When I see an ad on Facebook by a reputable brand, my emotional reaction is "finally, something reputable among all that crap".
It would be interesting to see how click-through rates differ between well-known and less well-known brands.
I do think the one area where things are flourishing and is often overlooked happens to be email newsletter ads (ala Daily candy,thrillist, idealbite, etc.). Thrillist is getting $275 cpm (at least thats what the rate card says, im sure its somewhat lower, but its up there). The attention they get parallels the quarter page newspaper ad you referenced in the post. Their attention is there, it's targeted, and it's trusted. Outlined some of it in a post I'm throwing on HN in a bit: http://jasonlbaptiste.com/commentary/email-newsletters-business/
At the end of the day though, it comes down to a great product/service. You can buy 10 cent or 10 dollar cpm ads, but if the product they go to sucks, it doesn't matter.
-jlb
But the authenticity bit was and is a question of delivering attention grapping, engaging content to an audience at a time when that audience is willing to listen to you and get involved with you. Every decade some brands really did get this and a large number of brands failed. To succeed on that mission today is just made more complicated by the media landscape and the new rules of engagement in this landscape. Rules, that seem too complicated for most of the classic advertisers out there.
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