Branding, Culture, Politics, and Everything in Between

Mashable outlines the problems Facebook has on monetizing its user base. It’s a long read, but the part they quoted from the New York Times struck me:

“Advertisers distract users; users ignore advertisers; advertisers distract better; users ignore better.”

This is one of the main problems I found with advertising in my master’s thesis. Advertisers are in an arms both against other advertisers and against consumers. All new advertising innovations (new media to advertise in, persuasion tactics etc.) are quickly copied by rival advertisers and they lose their effectiveness quite fast. And on the consumer front, as time goes by consumers become increasingly advertising savvy and more likely to ignore or “see past” advertising (as outlined in the NYT article).

I guess this is and always will be the advertiser’s problem; how to deal with constantly declining returns on advertising. Some brands choose to just out-spend the competition, hoping for first mover advantages in new marketing tactics by hiring the advertising talent du jour. Some brands are more responsive and consumer-centric, and move their focus away from practices to which consumers are no longer responding.

To me, the best way address this problem is not to concentrate on the medium, but rather on the message. Sure, marketing tactics are important, but in this day and age it’s becoming more clear that a message worth spreading within the consumer base is more vital than the right advertising channels. Or rather, as they ask in the Mashable article, “why consumers click?”.