Another industry kaput?

There's an article by Eric Clemons over on TechCrunch about advertising and its approaching online demise. Titled, Why Advertising is Failing on the Internet, it outlines a number of problems with online advertising, referring to an anticipated fall in online ad revenues. Clemons says, "Pushing a message at a potential customer when it has not been requested and when the consumer is in the midst of something else on the net, will fail as a major revenue source for most internet sites."

I've seen the article's comments as well as tweets online that assume he is saying advertising is dead, but I don't think he ever actually says that. Obviously I can't speak for him but I believe what he is saying is that online advertising won't work as a revenue model for sites etc., at least not in the long term. As the first section of the article says with its title, "There Must Be Something Other Than Advertising."

I think that's probably true but I think it's also true to say that advertising must be something other than what it has been. Clemons' entire article is based on a traditional advertising approach, which is interruptive. But he doesn't really consider advertising with another approach.

Maybe the problem for me is in how he defines advertising:

Advertising is using sponsored commercial messages to build a brand and paying to locate these messages where they will be observed by potential customers performing other activities; these messages describe a product or service, its price or fundamental attributes, where it can be found, its explicit advantages, or the implicit benefits from its use.

If this is the definition I would say yes, the odds of it working aren't good. But is that what it is? Maybe I'm muddling the terms advertising and marketing in my mind but I think there are other ways to communicate with customers that are less intrusive and more welcome. Also: although people usually say they don't like advertising and the interruptive approach, is that actually so? Maybe the like/dislike aspect is conditioned by the kind of ad, the brand it represents and the frequency of interruptions? (I'm thinking of Apple ads - I rarely, if ever, hear people complain about those.)

My take on it all? It's a good start but the article ends in wishful thinking. Advertising (marketing) needs a huge rethink/sensibility shift. The majority continue to use the interruptive approach and smarmy smile approach. If people distrust advertising it is because the reality (of a product/service) did not match the claims for it and there was a failure to engage customers as people, as opposed to numbers in a spreadsheet.

Despite the title, this is yet another article speculating about revenue models on the Internet. In the end, the conclusion of the article is, "I don't know where all this is going but I sure to wish and hope it's the scenario I've imagined."

With the breadth and depth of information available to people, with our ability to connect and converse between ourselves as well as with companies (assuming they engage), perhaps we're in an era when the best way for advertising to work is by changing how it sees itself. Maybe advertising needs to see itself as support rather than pitch, informative and helpful rather than a message to persuade.

Maybe it's time for advertising to "rebrand" itself and become something people might actually want.