The Web Wasn’t Made for Advertisers

From Seth Godin today:

Here’s the essential truth:

This is the first mass marketing medium ever that isn’t supported by ads.

If a newspaper, a radio station or a TV station doesn’t please advertisers, it disappears. It exists to make you (the marketer) happy.

That’s the reason the medium (and its rules) exist. To please the advertisers.

But the Net is different.

It wasn’t invented by business people, and it doesn’t exist to help your company make money.

Full post here.

Spot on.  This doesn’t mean the web isn’t a powerful marketing tool.  It simply means that people have CHOICE.  Almost endless choices of what to read and where to go next.

If a marketer can create a product that people choose to use.  To make it into their RSS reader, their bookmarks, etc. they have created something very powerful.

Marketers need to make impressions rather then simply buy them….

In the Wake of Bear Stearns and Everything Else…

This from Seth Godin:

 Change (and the fortunes that go with it) is almost always made during the down part of the cycle. It might not be fun, but it’s exciting. (Where do you think Google came from?) The opportunity is to find substantial opportunities (in any field) that deliver real value and have a future. Those jobs/investments/companies/ideas are undervalued right now, but not for long.

It is easier to go with the status quo when things are going well.

Seth Godin on curiousity

Not crazy about the text additions but this video is still worth 5 minutes of your time.

Perhaps I prove Seth’s point about the brightest minds abandoning their TVs but I still love TV (although less now than I did when there were new episodes of 30 Rock and The Office.) I do firmly believe that marketing is more than a jingle and have found my enjoyment of TV increased the day I bought a DVR.