Is Web Advertising Doomed? (Interesting Video)
 

Business 2.0 Magazine, asked a roomful of Internet entrepreneurs if online ads are headed for a bust. Their responses will surprise you

http://blogs.business2.com/business2..._advertis.html

DH

Interesting!

I agree with Digg CEO - there is no trend towards doom. If enough people begin to make their own video ads for their own products, the rates for standard consumers will come down and the volume of ads online will be greater, with more variety.

I was most interested in the comments about broadcast advertising, but isn't its demise primarily of concern to companies which treat (some such as news organisations may have no choice) the 'net as a broadcast medium?

By which I mean that "real world" newspapers, magazines, TV and radio networks, etc., of necessity draw their audiences with content that is unrelated to their income source: their advertisers. TGPs, links lists and review sites follow the same model online, but online it is also feasible to have sites which actually feature what they are selling: blogs do that very well, FPA's were/are a primitive version, and there are lots of possibilities inbetween. Many manufacturers, retailers and other businesses have online "homes" and although many are like print catalogs because they too haven't caught on to the differentness of the 'net, a lot of these sites are highly interactive and "sticky", as well as being informative and effective marketing tools.

Businesses which cannot monetize their content directly (and although several newspapers for example have tried, I read that most are failing badly) are going to have an extremely hard time as people become immune to traditional ads and many block them completely. But online promotion isn't doomed at all, quite the contrary, it will develop as a clearly separate field and I think the biggest change will be that more products and services will reach out directly to the consumers, rather than sit passively waiting for ads to generate their traffic.