The Machines Keep Getting Online Advertising Wrong

By Marta Wohrle

The other day, I was at the paidContent EconAffinity conference fighting the urge to fiddle with my BlackBerry when an entertaining spat broke out among the panelists. The session was called “Online Advertising: Is Turning to Behavioral Targeting and Bigger Ads the Answer?” and was ably moderated by the exuberant Wenda Harris Millard. She was, like the rest of us, rather enjoying the ruckus, which was sparked when Mike Keriakos of Waterfront Media told Andy Monfried of Lotame where he could stick his ads, and Andy addressed the audience with a dramatic (although not terribly original) soliloquy about buggy whips. Things then got a little heated.

Underlying all of this was a number of serious points about the past, present and future of advertising online. Partly to avoid putting the wrong words in either Andy or Mike’s mouths, I’ll proceed with my take on the issue.
When I think about old media, it strikes me that it has been very good at relationships with advertisers and rather poor at cultivating relationships with its consumers. The thing about digital media is that it has gone way too far the other way. Audiences are center and front of successful Web sites and, of course, the whole kit and caboodle when it comes to social media. Advertising, on the other hand, has been commoditized. Read More…