Joel Pinkham

This is one of the best quotes I’ve read for a while:

The basic point about the web is that it is not an advertising medium. The web is not a selling medium; it is a buying medium. It is user controlled, so the user controls, the user experiences.

This comes from Jakob Nielsen, the godfather of web usability. While I definitely think he’s taking a bit far, he does make a very good point and gives marketers something to think about.

I think advertising has it’s place on the internet, so long as you actually have something that adds value to the users and isn’t too intrusive. This is why search marketing is so effective. It adds value to the user by giving them extra solutions for their problem they are looking to solve. It isn’t intrusive and doesn’t distract the user from their goal.

Wall Street Journal reports that Google are soon to launch a free ad-serving platform which will meet the needs of small to medium sized publishers.

With this platform combined with DoubleClick, Google will soon have even more of a wealth of knowledge about cross site behaviour of users. Between Google Search/Services, AdSense, Ad Manager and DoubleClick they’ll have their services on a huge number of websites. They’ll be able to use this information to serve ads in more effective ways. If Google are willing to take the risk on the privacy issues surrounding behavioural targeting (with a bit of caution and Google sly) this will have huge benefits for advertisers, as well as Google revenues.

Behavioural targeting is still a baby, and won’t reach small ad markets like NZ but it provides a great potential to have insanely targeted options for advertising and to serve extremely targeted ad creatives. Because of the ‘insane’ targeting options, there are of course huge privacy issues. Google already knows me too well, and this will make them know me and be able to target me that much more effectively.