Sponsored Search: Question 1 - Future of Advertising

First topic message reminder :

People have grown to tune out and ignore many radio and television commercials. What is the future of sponsored search ads? Will advertising evolve into something else?

Greetings,

In my opinion,although we often turn the Pop-up ads off or change our window, these ads still make more people to know this product or brand.This make the advertiser achieve the effect(in a annoying way).

In the future, I also think the advertiser(or search engine service provider) should think about the customized ads. Nowadays, it's easy to track users on the internet. So the search engine could get the user's search behavior more easier. That can help the advertiser to target customer more accurately. When customers receive their own customized ads, they will be less likely to turn the ads off. So the Customized ads will be more efficient than the general ads.

I like d.alsafi's opinion that we often receive the mismatched result or ads which will decrease our trust and make us gradually are not willing to click the ads. But if there is a good mechanism like the Amazon's recommendation engine, I think it will make a big different from general ads to customized as.

Cheers,

One of the most popular movies released in 2010 was Inception, an futuristic espionage movie that centered around implanting "ideas" into the target's brain without the host realizing it himself. I believe that the future of advertising will take on a similar form and "inject" the idea of purchasing into the consumer in a highly subtle manner through social media. Having grown up in a digital age, consumers are very wary and highly sensitive to forms of spam. Sophisticated spam filters guard the inbox of all email accounts these days and it is no longer possible to simply bombard consumers with an avalanche of links and pray that they "accidentally" click on one and purchase a product. Rather, group think and trending on social media platforms such as twitter will capture the wallets if the consumers is convinced, just like the movie, that he is making the decision himself. Even still, a horde of consumers buzzing about a product will still come secondary to the persuasive power of one's inner circle of family and friends. It is here that Facebook wields an incredible advantage over other platforms by tapping into the direct network instead of faceless strangers on the internet. It is no wonder than that firms are clamoring over a chance to tap into facebook's rich potential but it has still proven quite difficult. Advertisers are entering an intimate circle and users do not want big corporations invading what they believe to be a private place (one's facebook account.) The key, again, is to move with stealth and introduce the product in an organic way through a person's friend-list, and even better yet, have the user stumble upon the idea and broadcast the information among his peers without him feeling the nudge from behind to do so.



One way to do this is to incentivize the user to proactively disseminate product information by reward points for reviews (ala Netflix and Amazon) or direct discounts for group purchases (groupon). Unsurprisingly, users are most proactive when confronted with something free and useful, as in the case of software such as gmail, google+, dropbox, which make users feel like a "hero" for introducing a product beneficial to the uninitiated while rewarding the user for signing up a new member.

A healthy rewards program and indirect "inception" must be in the arsenal of advertisers moving forward.

Piggybacking on what Romain and Andy said, I believe that judging from how advertising is evolving right now, I wouldn't be surprised if we see something similar to Minority Report in the near future. When people walk down the streets or drive on a highway, or even watch TV, all the ads will be personalized for the consumers. Databases full of consumer profiles will eventually be able to preempt what a consumer wants and tell them before they even know it. The traditional channels for distributing advertisements will all cater to individual consumers or even groups. One person that looks at up a billboard will see an ad designed for them, another person that looks up at the same billboard will see another ad completely designed for him/her. I like the idea of Augmented Reality being used as another platform for advertising, and am very excited to see the many different applications it has to offer, but I don't think it will REALLY take off until it becomes more pervasive and people are less averse to putting goggles on their faces that facilitate the use of AR, or they come up with a less intrusive alternative to wearing AR glasses

When we speak about the future of ads we should consider the fact that everything is moving mobile (tablet, smartphone) and i want to quote the Google CEO Eric Schmidt who said "The arrival of a truly mobile Web, offering a new generation of location-based advertising, is set to unleash a 'huge revolution". Following this, at the 2010 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Google presented their vision of a new business model for mobile operators and trying to convince mobile operators to embrace location-based services and advertising. With Google as the advertising provider, it would mean that every mobile operator using their location-based advertising service would be revealing the location of their mobile customers to Google.

Another breakthrough that makes advertising in online versions of videos more successful than commercials on television could be key in the transition of television to online viewing, and even if we are not in this situation yet, i think we are not far from that.

I like the "Inception" argument.

And as some of you've mentioned above, the future advertising may become more interactive and dynamic,
In fact I've work on a project last year to developed a location-based service app on smartphones,
and we also collaborated with some stores and restaurants.(There are two kinds of users in our app, the normal user and the business user)
Through GPS and AGPS and even Bluetooth, the store can send coupon or information to the people near them,
and consumers can also choose how large is the range around them that they want to be informed.

Between consumers and consumers, they can turn on our bluetooth sensor and receive the info dynamically,
and reply it or give comment right away, it is an interesting and possible way of future advertising or communication.

I think one of the futures of advertising if the consumers to consumers one.

Indeed, the online platforms allow everyone to share information very easily. I actually realised how helpful and reliable this information sharing was when I lived in New York. I started to use yelp.com all the time. This website offers restaurant reviews made by consumers. This system works because a lot of consumers post reviews after they go to a restaurant. So when you go to a restaurant you often have thousand of reviews that are so helpful in your choice. These customers have no interest in rating a restaurant good or bad (let's assume they are not restaurant's employees). So at some point when I wanted to have dinner in an area, let's say East Village, I just sorted the restaurants in East Village by the best grades, and chose the best one.

What better advertising can you have than being on the top of a list of restaurants in East Village reviewed by thousands of users?

I liked all the reactions concerning the development of targeted and geocalized ads along with the mobile advertising trend. Also wants to suggest another development trend for the ads market.
Advertising online is also used by some ground breaking website such as Beezik to finance your consmption.
Beezik concept is to legally let the user download any music available on the website. During the download, the user watches a video from a advertising partner and interact with the video if he wants to complete the download. The advertiser is paying for the Major Fee and the user get the MP3 file on his computer.
Such a business model is breaking new ground for advertising and could be replicated in different industries
Ch

I agree with Gregoire on the development of this kind of promotion of product.
It is actually all the point of the competition between facebook and Google for the LIKE button, Like a page, a product or a service and your are actually sharing the news with all your friends who value your opinion more than they would value some random user review. Viral marketing reaches new ground in the digital era