Naysayers are everywhere, so it’s difficult to know who to trust. One guy is claiming advertising is dead, and another says traditional advertising is a dying breed. In a sense, both are correct. Marketing has a new face – a digital one. So advertising as we know it is pretty much dead and traditional agencies are being forced to comply. The Internet is transforming how we display ads. The consumer has more control over their experience with brands, so SEO companies and marketers are forced to adapt.
Today’s marketing looks a lot different than it did just a decade ago – we’re able to choose what types of ads we want to see on Facebook and we can skip past ads we don’t want to watch on websites like YouTube. SEO agencies in Los Angeles are paying closer attention to their Web design techniques as well as how they place ads within content. In fact, native ads are the next big thing, which incorporates ads into platforms, so that they blend in. But that’s a topic for another article.
The Demise of Traditional Advertising
Ad agencies have yet to fully adopt the rapid changes we’re seeing in the marketing community. They continue to focus on landing the perfect 30-minute spot on television (when in fact, most people are watching their favorite shows online), and are failing to reach their audience because of their traditional habits.
Back in 1994, there was an article in Wired that asked “Is Advertising Dead?” And the writer of that article made an almost dead-on prediction of the future of advertising. He forecast that during the 2015 Super Bowl, consumers would be given the option to choose which commercials they wanted to watch. Not too far from the truth, eh?
One spokesperson from a traditional ad agency, Dan Widen, stated that the evolution of digital marketing “will transform us or render us inert.” So they’re feeling the pressure – it just comes down to who will crack and who will remain stubborn to the obvious.
Big agencies are already witnessing drops in revenue, which is expected to accelerate over the next five years. More and more ad dollars are being thrown at digital content. The agencies struggling to stay above water are haphazardly hiring digital native creatives, but these young writers and designers are leaving these entities after realizing these agencies, headed by older generations, have no clue what they’re doing. The great ones are then snatched up by in-house creative studios and digital shops.
Millennials Don’t Want to Be Sold To
It’s the theme of marketing today. We hear how millennials are a new breed that is savvier, smarter and less inclined of being advertised to. They prefer advertisements to be less “brandy” and more “human” and engaging. They desire content that is useful and less focused on increasing revenue – sounds bogus, right?
But there is a savvy way to accommodate their request, while still keeping an eye on your bottom line. Innovative brands are creating content rather than ads, such as films, journalism-vertising, docuseries,events and crowdsourced stories.
Authentic storytelling is the future of branding. It’s the ideal solution to today’s dilemma of “entertain me without selling to me.” This content is actually much easier to create, so a lot of brands are welcoming this concept. Consumers are more likely to engage with and share this type of content. Most brands are even witnessing hundreds of thousands, and in some cases millions, of views per piece of content.
Wouldn’t you rather have people come to your content rather than you striving to get their attention? But few ad agencies see it this way and are falling behind the rat race. If they were smart, they’d take some pointers from SEO companies on how to go digital successfully.
See Related Posts
Call Now