Exit the Ad Mentality

What’s the point that John Battelle is trying to make here?

Here it is. People are flocking to sites where people have conversations (Tumblr, Threadless, Boing Boing, Digg, etc).

So, naturally, brands want to go there, too.

But what they can’t figure out is how to buy the same results from advertising that they got before the Internet existed (or even V1 of the Internet).

What they’re used to is placing ads in six magazines that everyone is reading, on three TV shows that everyone is watching, and on nine radio stations that everyone is listening to. Or the three portals everyone started out at in 1998.

Version 2 of the Internet is completely destroying that way of generating brand awareness. Why? There are millions of places, pages, and points of interaction where you could put an ad on the Internet. And not one of these can produce the results of an offline placement.

But the real issue is that on the Web, no one cares. The ad is simply all wrong for this world of infinite, moment to moment choices. Ads don’t connect, ad networks don’t reliably match seller and buyer (no pork bellies, please).

Hmm, what could the solution be? If people are flying around the Web having conversations, having them as they learn, shop, buy, socialize, then what if the ads were aligned with that mode and style of interaction? You know, something that actually gets people talking to the brand.

Does your banner ad get people talking about your brand? No, really, it doesn’t.

Dell, on the other hand, racked up some pretty impressive numbers for its ReGeneration/Facebook thingy (7,300 submissions, 1.1M votes, etc). Is that an ad? Yes, it’s the new ad/marketing.

It takes a different kind of creativity to make conversational media work, but the results not only rival anything you’d get offline in terms of pure numbers, but every one of them - submissions, votes, friends, comments - is interactive, priceless.