To most people in this day and age advertising online seems like an obvious route. We all use the itnernet and we all see how many ads are there. We realize them especially when we try and watch videos on YouTube and other such websites. Ads are forced upon us. Seeing all these ads on the “net” makes me think that money spent on online advertising is money well spent. However, after reading “The Revolution Will Not be Monetized”, by Bob Garfield, I have an altered opinion.
Bob Garfield touches on a lot of very interesting ideas. He says that advertisers only valued online ads about half as much as print media. Garfield says this has something to do with supply and demand. He says that since the internet is such a vast wasteland, there are too many places for ads which drives down the demand, and the price with it. Garfield also talks about the idea that more important than advertising is the ability to targets existing customers friends through social networking sites such as Facebook. This is invaluable because word of mouth advertising is possibly the best kind out there, and the most free. When advertisers can have acceess to you and all of your friends it gives them a unique oppurtunity to advertise to people you may already be talking to about their product. The down side to this is that it has the potential to severly infringe on our privacy.
It seems as though, for now, advertisers who choose to place ads on the internet are in need of a new system. The ads seem like they still follow an old formula. What worked for television does not seem to be working for the internet. Most ads that we see are not clicked on and most video ads that come before what we actually want to see are muted and not watched. I think the problem with internet ads is an old system. Times have changed and so should the advertising.