Wharton had some great articles and this is one of my recent favourites. It starts with this:

Americans spend an average of 14 hours a week online and 14 hours watching TV. But marketers spend 22% of their advertising dollars on TV and only 6% online, according to data compiled and analyzed by Google.

 

My guess is it's because they're stuck in the past with the whole TV Industrial Complex thing and one day will wake up. What they really need to wake up is I'll bet those stats are massively different for Generation Y. They are for me and I'm considered old - I reckon I spent about 3 hours per week (max) watching TV and probably well over 30 on the Internet. Here is the rub though...

I can't remember the last time I clicked on an advert online. I have a mental filter that blocks out display ads and my experience has led me to generally not click on search ads. That doesn't mean I've never clicked on an ad though as I suspect I have without even knowing it. As contextual advertising gets better, that will change. Here's an example

 

  • Last night I started looking online for a new fireplace. Not something I'm going to buy too frequently.
  • I found the fireplace I wanted on the manufacturers website but they don't sell direct so I have to take the product code and perform another search which I manually narrowed down to London to get a local dealer.
  • Eventually I found a site that had what I wanted

 

Here's how it should (and can work)

 

  • I'm looking on the manufacturer site at the fireplace.
  • The browser knows where I live and with my permission provides that information (or if I'm mobile uses GPS/cell triangulation)
  • I'm offered a time sensitive, contextual ad with a time sensitive offer that says "buy know from this local dealer and save 10%"
  • in that scenario I would say my likeliehood to buy goes up in line with the percentage points of discount

The technology do to that exists now from the location and ad-serving part. The hardest part is actually the supply chain to connect the manufacturer and dealer, their stock systems and the rebate plans. Even that can be done though and is already in some places. Services like Biztalk in the cloud will make this easier.

 

That is where I think the future of advertising is. Then transport that scenario on to any screen (or potentially any surface) and advertising gets turned on it's head and becomes 1:1 and the ROI is instantly measurable.

For many of you this is obvious but even some of the smartest people I know still haven't got this.

Mel gets this though - check out his writing.