Converging Concepts — and Fluff — in Online Advertising
I had lunch with Nick Ciarelli today, publisher of Think Secret (whose advertising we represent at BackBeat Media), and while talking about Google’s purchase of DoubleClick our conversation moved into one of my favorite discussions: click-obsession. Nick noted that though Google’s click-obsessed model is based on fluff, perhaps it was the one thing that helped the Internet advertising market recover from the recession at the beginning of the century. And he’s right: it gave advertisers something tangible to hold on to and helped rebuild trust in the medium.
Of course, you all know I like to remind you that tracking clicks of online ads is about as valuable as tracking the number of cars that crash into billboards, but it was *some* metric, and it likely did help the whole market lift itself from the ashes.
And to tie it all together: though I originally dismissed it as positive spin on Jupitermedia’s recent stock price decline, further reflection leads me to think Alan Meckler’s post this morning about increasing numbers of Internet-focused billboards on Route 101 being a barometer of the amount of fluff in the Internet space may be true. Perhaps the DoubleClick purchase is Google’s hedge bet against cars crashing into their click-based billboard that’s stood so strong for the last few years.
Technorati Tags: web advertising
