Ambition and Online Advertising
One of the great things about a paid search campaign is the ability to mix and match messages easily and quickly to determine which bit works best. If you have four messages, you swap around the headline or the body copy or the URL… and the one that makes you the most money is the winner. Now imagine blowing that concept out to include banners. For EVERYONE. Scratch that, make it for banner ads, text ads, TV commercials, stuff on your cell phone… That’s the idea being put forth by David W. Kenny of Digitas, recently acquired agency of the Publicis Groupe. (Read the story here.
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All of us have known for some time that technology would eventually make advertising extremely personal – I always think of the ads from the film Minority Report. (Watch this clip to see what I mean.) In the film, by scanning Tom Cruise’s eye, the ad not only knows his name, but what he’s purchased in the past. I wouldn’t say what Publicis is proposing is quite there yet, but the idea is the same: Target individuals rather than a large group. It’s the difference between fishing with a net or a pole. Concepts like this will someday (I hope) raise the debate as to what an advertiser’s responsibility is to the consumer’s privacy. After all, this is just the next extension of what has been going on for some time with online advertising, monitoring cookies and caching consumer’s personal data. I suppose if no one else minds that Big Brother isn't enforcing the Newspeak Dictionary but is instead selling Ford Forerunners, I am probably the only one with a problem.
About the Author: Eric Reid
I am the Social Media Services Manager for Off Madison Ave. I've been with the company since 2006, when I was hired to do SEO, and link building in particular.
When social networking sites started cropping up, at first I started using them to create backlinks - but they weren't the best for that, given all of the "nofollow" attributes. However, I did see the potential for all of the direct referral traffic they represent. Since then I've been actively pursuing both tactics for clients: Links that can help them for search, and social postings that get them involved in the conversation.
It's about the coolest job you could ever get. ;)
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Off Madison Ave: Phoenix Advertising Agency, Arizona Public Relations Firms says:
[...] out. This is why I always thought interactive ads and virtual Gap customer service reps shown in 2002 movie Minority Report were the wave of the [...]