The Future of Advertising

" The websites we visit, the online links we click, the search queries we conduct, the products we put in virtual shopping carts, the personal details we reveal on social networking pages - all of this can give companies insight into what internet ads we might be interested in seeing."

"While Congress has waded into internet privacy issues before, this measure could break new ground, as the first major attempt to regulate a nascent but fast-growing industry that represents the future of advertising."

Privacy is going to be regulated in the US and that may well affect the internet as we know it. If the likes of doubleclick and other media click measurement is able to intrude into our "privacy" to then work out what to sell to us, we have the philosohphers stone instead of attraction.

There is no magic formula to human interest. It is an instinct. The advertisers (the old school advertising agencies and campaign magicians who can, with a single image, influence a percentage of behaviour) do not crave intimate details of your preferences in order to sell. It is the wrong equation.

It is as though the internet has made everyone forget what drives people. It is not what we did yesterday, our normal habits - that territory is the burnt out old fields we must plough to return value. And when you are marketing "intimately" (selling into the areas already marked "SOLD") and to everyone, are you not risking customers who may not attach themselves to the brand, so much as be made less interested as the more exposure to the common, the more interest is going to wane.

And what is "private" anyway? Which bill board you read as you whisk past them on a train is your own business, but which newspaper you read on line or distinct patterns of habit, how often you play an online game for example, or do things that privacy is there to protect. For example, you become a little curious about a subject and use the internet to dip your toes. Do you want a salesperson on the phone inviting you buy what you are just a little curious about? Of course you do not.

Advertising is attraction.

That is the basic law, and if you forget it it is easy to remember, A = A

Your advertising is bait to attract interest. Interest is instinctive. You show interest in things that correlate to enhanced survival and part of our survival algorithm is being surprised by change.

The secret is to BE NEW. Not to dredge up all those things we are getting bored with. The advertising industry can either FOLLOW what we do, or INNOVATE and SURPRISE.

It is all very well for everyone in the world to hammer on your door with a better dish washing liquid. But that is not the future.

It is new ideas. New ways to wear them. New things to excite and attract interest.