Week 6 - Why Advertising is Failing on the Internet

This article brings full circle the online business model readings we had in the previous week. Maybe this author is right and advertising will eventually fail. I don't think that was his main point, but I do agree that advertising is less effective on the internet than in other media. We discussed the online ad games (Orbitz's "Sink the Putt", etc.). Those are catchy ways to have someone interact with an advertisement, but I think it gets old after awhile and people ignore it.

With so much content out there on the internet, people are going to keep surfing the net to find the information they need, and they will avoid the ads as much as possible. The author makes a valid argument of when you go grab a snack while watching TV. It is always during the commercials unless you really don't care too much about what is on the TV at that moment. I think the most annoying ads out there are the ones that consume most of the webpage and start playing sound on your computer. No one wants that. If I wanted to watch an ad, I would have visited YouTube and found something clever, not annoying. Those ads will drive people away because it frustrates them and they most likely can find the same information or product on a different site.

Advertising might be failing on the Internet, but at some point I think we will have to pay more for enjoying the stuff we do on the web. Nothing (or not much) in life is free and it will probably catch up to us. Maybe companies will realize they don't have a great Internet business model and leave the net, until people start paying. That seems unlikely to me, but that would be an extreme case. I really see advertising sticking around on the Internet in the future, but I think we all will, if we haven't already, block the majority of it out of our consciousness.