Let’s face reality here. For a decade now, we’ve had a vision of the future as one of a romp through a vast collection of entertainment, funded by advertising that we all try to never notice. The fact is that all the ad metrics in the world don’t prove that anyone actually sees an ad, and insiders in the industry tell me that attempts to get better numbers by measuring “engagement” in terms of clicking through or even eventually buying something aren’t measuring up either. This probably doesn’t surprise a lot of people, and the only reason I’m getting into it is that we’re seeing some interesting trends and shifts that may indicate that ad sponsorship is about to hit the wall.
The biggest issue is privacy, of course, and here we’re moving toward giving consumers more ability to see what people are keeping in the way of personal data, and opting out. This isn’t surprising either, but if you think of it there’s a surprise inside. Why would websites push the issue to the edge of regulatory intervention, risk backlash by consumers? Sure, shortsighted greed is a part of it (what isn’t that a part of these days?) but why now? My answer is that the industry knows it’s being eaten by fads.
What makes online advertising powerful is its tactical nature. You can launch a campaign in hours instead of months, you can get demographics to help target. Because the Internet is such a media darling, whatever new comes along is treated to a chorus of editorial praise, including free exposure on popular TV shows. Even before MySpace or Facebook the industry was tapping into social, viral, marketing. But social marketing is fad marketing, and the trouble with a fad as we all know is that eventually the newest thing is old. And while you chase the future, you often forget the present.
Look at Google. Look at their “Plus” social launch. A little-known fact is that Google’s decision to adopt the term resulted in changes to how Google products work. Some are little; if you look carefully at the Chrome tab bar you’ll see the “+” symbol is gone from the tab stub used to add a new browser tab. More insidious is the fact that the search process has been changed so the “+” operator no longer indicates that the next word/phrase is mandatory in the results (you now put a word into quotes instead). How many people might have missed the memo on that change, and have suddenly found Google yielding less relevant results? Did some go to Bing? This, because Google wanted to chase the Facebook Fad.
Or because Google wanted to sell more ads? AdWords and the goal of user searching are at odds, let’s face it. On a given search, Google wants to serve as many ads as it can. Give the user too much precision in finding what they want and there may be no ads that qualify. But the user wants to find something, not be subjected to advertising, so maximizing the latter at the expense of the former is hardly in the consumer’s interest.
The ad-sell mindset has gotten Google in trouble in a number of ways, not the least being allowing advertisers to take out AdWords on a competitor’s brand or name. In Australia, regulators just ruled that Google is responsible for protecting the trademark and rights of these competitors because the consumer has a reasonable expectation that an ad showed as the result of a search represents the brand being searched for. Here, of course, SEO is often used to hijack search results. Is that also going to come under scrutiny? And all of this to try to boost search in the face of a social-network fad.
How much of Facebook really IS just a fad? When you get your first bowl of ice cream you eat until you’re sick, and then you taper back to more rational levels of consumption. Do we think that everyone is going to spend more time on social media every week, until our entire lives are spent watching faked videos of basketball shots? And GDP growth hasn’t exploded as a result of all the new purchasing being made through social networks, has it?