Advertising and being OPEN
I’ve been thinking a lot lately: about two differing methodologies that sometimes by chance, sync up. That is, the free and the not-so-free. Everyone wants to say the web is free, but what are the top sites? Aren’t they really basking in the power of advertising dollars. Technology is free as long as its funded by Doritos! That’s a tasty chip right there. Hold on, I’ll be back, I have to get some, and some pringles without principles while I’m at it…
Ok, back… nom nom nom…
As much as we’d like to not sell out or be sustainable by the viewers like you; it’s just not economical. There is always going to be some amount of whoring in order for us to pay the bills. What is putting the money in our pocket is someone not concerned about whether or not they can loan us money for a cup of coffee once in a while (payed subscriptions), but someone that’s concerned about a return on investment: monetary obligations. We all want someone to take us out to a nice restaurant and treat us right, but at the same time they’re trying to push their products on us… hard. So what’s wrong with everyone? Just because you say you’re open, doesn’t mean you are. You praise it like a religion, and then peddle your wares.
So what I think everyone needs to understand is that solutions to problems are dependent on the PROBLEM. We can all bitch and moan about our fan-boy tendencies, but what matters is getting the job done as fast and be as fruitful as possible. Advertising is one of those cases that merits quick turn-around and the widest range of tools. We want to shock our customer into buying our product, leaving a lasting memory when the time comes and they’re at the check out line or being sure they have an incentive to pull your product from the shelf. This truth has made it from television to its spiritual successor, and will remain a large factor for much of the web.
Will the web standards ever catch up to advertisers expectations? In a sense it is trying; it’s constantly catching up. There will always be the cheap solutions to people’s advertising dollars. But, at the same time advertising will always push the market and create demand for high quality advertisements. I work on web advertisements all the time (approaching ~1 million in ad revenue), and the open and free solutions to the problems for advertising barely exist; they are always raising the bar, and it always needs to be done yesterday (the deadlines are literally missed by a day or two). Recently I was asked to animate all our advertisements in JavaScript, with nice slide in effects that are coordinated effortlessly. The reason to make it in JavaScript: it would be really cool if we could make it in JavaScript.
Coolness factor aside, the dev time needed to make all that work and not suck in everything besides Chrome (please get chrome, for the love of god) within a time window of two weeks, would’ve meant me wanting to kill myself from lack of sleep. Instead, I said, “yeah that would be cool, but I am going to be realistic, and work on that in flash inside a few days”. And we all won, because
- I was happy because no one died
- I nor my coworkers did not end up being placed through a life-debilitating wringer that left them scarred for life from choosing hard drugs to stay up
- Most importantly the client was happy!!
In advertisement the most important thing is turn around time (and does it blur or rather poop smear). It’s important to know the limitations of the tools at your disposal especially when you do not have the time to mess up and switch course in the middle, when the middle means only a few days.