Journalists, get ready to explore and experiment, advised Steve Rubel and Stuart MacDonald in "Advertising 2.0," a panel focused on the future of web advertising. The panel left journalists with more questions than answers. "Advertising is way more complicated than it has ever been," said Stuart MacDonald.
The trend for advertisers is to develop their own interactive Web sites to entertain and attract their visitors. Web sites with distinct online presences, for example, include Wrigley and Budweiser. Media publishers should grab advertisers before they become self-supporting and lure even more ad customers away from media sites, Rubel warned.
A lot is up in the air when it comes to advertising strategies for websites. The media have to be willing to experiment, adapt quickly, and give people options to consume content on and off of the Web site, with Facebook, a cell phone or an iPod.
As for advertising with videos, media producers are still trying to figure out what works. Capturing viewers’ attention is not an easy task. Rocketboom, a short video blog or "vlog," shows advertising in their videos with a cable TV news-like crawl.
Local ads have been the next big thing for ten years. However, MacDonald said, no one has figured out how to make money off of them to date.
Think about content on the inside and the outside, Rubel said. It’s like PB&J; it all tastes good even though you don’t know what is where. It’s hard to imagine the wall, though, between church and state being made out of peanut butter and jelly.
The marketers closed the panel explaining that "at the end of the day, a lot of this is math." For journalists, it may be about more than just numbers and money; they may just have to figure out the right balance between the peanut butter and jelly.
-- Savannah Aepli
