That's one way to look at it. Another is that regardless of what it lays out on ads, Apple has a greater online presence than most brands that spend many times what it does. Consider that in December, Apple sites had the 10th-best traffic figures on the web. Those sites, which grabbed more unique visitors than many of the most popular sites where Apple would place its own ads -- including The New York Times, NBC Universal and ESPN -- are destinations. Plus, there's the endless gusher of Apple-obsessed jabbering on any number of blogs and social networks. Oh, and Apple did manage to lay out $32 million in measured media online in 2007, more than double the amount it spent the year before and four times its 2005 outlay.
Look closely at the disappointment that an advanced marketer in 2008 wouldn't be willing to spend more than that to spray its brand all over an Internet already saturated by it and you'll see very clearly some misperceptions plaguing the marketing business today. First, there's the basic mistake that marketing is synonymous with advertising. Then, there's the underexamined assumption so popular in marketing circles of all kinds that when it comes to helping companies create brands or move product the Internet's greatest use is as an ad medium.
Are we having the right conversation?
What you're about to read is not an argument for making over web marketing as a factory for destination websites or for making every brand a content player. Not every brand has as much natural pull as Apple and, anyway, there have already been high-profile flubs in the if-you-build-a-content-channel-they-will-come department (Bud.TV, anyone?). This, however, is a call to give some thought to a question that's not asked enough about the Internet: Should it even be viewed as an ad medium? After all, in some quarters of the broader marketing world, the habit of looking at advertising as the most important tool in the marketers' toolbox is undergoing intense interrogation. Consider the growth of the word-of-mouth marketing business, premised on the notion that people not corporations who help other people make consumer decisions. Or look at the growing importance put on public relations and customer-relationship management both in marketing circles and even in the c-suite.
The same conversation should be going on around the Internet. Trends like those listed suggest the possibility of a post-advertising age, a not-too-distant future where consumers will no longer be treated as subjects to be brainwashed with endless repetitions of whatever messaging some focus group liked. That world isn't about hidden persuasion, but about transparency and dialogue and at its center is that supreme force of consumer empowerment, the Internet. But when you look at how the media and marketing business packages the Internet -- as just more space to be bought and sold -- you have to worry that the history of mass media is just trying to repeat itself. Rarely a fortnight goes by without some new bullish forecast for ad growth that works to stoke digital exuberance within media owners that often drowns out critical thinking about the medium itself.
Here's the issue: The internet is too often viewed as inventory, as a place where brands pay for the privilege of being adjacent to content, like prime-time TV and glossy magazines relics of the pre-blog days when getting into the media game actually required infrastructure and distribution. The presumed power of that adjacency has provided the groundwork for the media industry for decades and long ago calcified into an auspicious economic reality the big media companies are trying to take with it to the digital future. For the media seller, ads and ad revenue might be all that's left.
The same conversation should be going on around the Internet. Trends like those listed suggest the possibility of a post-advertising age, a not-too-distant future where consumers will no longer be treated as subjects to be brainwashed with endless repetitions of whatever messaging some focus group liked. That world isn't about hidden persuasion, but about transparency and dialogue and at its center is that supreme force of consumer empowerment, the Internet. But when you look at how the media and marketing business packages the Internet -- as just more space to be bought and sold -- you have to worry that the history of mass media is just trying to repeat itself. Rarely a fortnight goes by without some new bullish forecast for ad growth that works to stoke digital exuberance within media owners that often drowns out critical thinking about the medium itself.
Here's the issue: The internet is too often viewed as inventory, as a place where brands pay for the privilege of being adjacent to content, like prime-time TV and glossy magazines relics of the pre-blog days when getting into the media game actually required infrastructure and distribution. The presumed power of that adjacency has provided the groundwork for the media industry for decades and long ago calcified into an auspicious economic reality the big media companies are trying to take with it to the digital future. For the media seller, ads and ad revenue might be all that's left.
