The results were swift and backed up by irrefutable data: All the videos were flops, the image of Obama with his family worked best and people responded favourably to a “learn more” button. The staff altered the website accordingly and, shortly thereafter, saw a 40% bump in Web-based sign-ups. “The single best thing you get from the Web is the ability to be proven wrong fast,” Kaushik says.
For advertisers, the difference between a digital campaign like Obama’s and a traditional one is clear. Run a newspaper or TV ad, and you may not know for a long time that the campaign material’s green background turned viewers off. Online, however, you can watch users veer away in real time, tinker with the ad a little, and then check again. The flow of data is constant and conclusive. In this light, it’s easy to see why an increasing number of companies are devoting larger portions of their marketing budgets to the digital realm. According to an Econsultancy report released in February, about two-thirds of companies surveyed said they intended to increase budgets for online campaigns; about 40% said they would decrease their print media budgets. The giants of old media have every reason to be concerned.
In his book Googled: The End of the World as We Know It, Ken Auletta, a media critic at The New Yorker, recounts a 2003 meeting between Google’s founders and Mel Karmazin, who was then the president of media giant Viacom. When told of Google’s plans to take the guesswork out of advertising by giving marketers detailed statistics on which ads work and which don’t, Karmazin complained: “You’re fucking with the magic.”
When Google executives talk about the future of advertising, this is what they imagine: A pizza parlour that wants to run a two-for-one special directed at males, 20 to 25 years old, who happen to be watching a particular game on TV. Google foresees a day when that pizza joint may pay to have its commercial run—on television—for the duration of the game, and only in living rooms within the restaurant’s delivery radius.
Such a scenario is actually not all that far removed from reality. Whereas Web, print and television advertising used to live in separate kingdoms, the lines have already begun to blur. Many of the higher-end TVs lining the shelves at electronic stores now come with some sort of Internet connectivity. Pair that with the rise of mobile computing—recently bolstered by the release of Apple’s iPad—and there is compelling evidence that digital screens hold the future of magazine, newspaper and television content.
It can only be a matter of time before our viewing and reading habits will be as open to third-party analysis as our daily Web wanderings. If that’s the case, the days of the passive, non-interactive ad are numbered. And for an example of how rapid the axe’s fall can be, marketers need only look at how quickly classified newspaper ads were replaced by Craigslist postings less than a decade ago.
This time, however, traditional media is less likely to be caught off-guard. Many marketing departments are already committing more resources to the creation of online communities, comments sections, mobile apps and other online tools that facilitate greater interaction between marketers and consumers. It’s a smart move, says Kaushik. “Marketing is becoming less about shouting at people and more about participating in conversations and influencing them through that,” he says.
For some, this might sound a little subversive. Kaushik’s boss, vice-president of product management Susan Wojcicki, has a more delicate way of phrasing it: “We want ads to be useful.”
