Re: WWW user #'s

xerxes (xerxes_at_clark.net)
Thu, 1 Aug 1996 21:30:13 -0400 (EDT)

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Comments in context....criticism of the entire "impressions" approach to
advertising on the web.......

At 8:29 AM 7/30/96, Donna Dolezal Zelzer wrote:
>"S. Finer" <xerxes_at_clark.net> said:
>
>> The patterns of usage are quite complex....and I have ID'd several dozen
>> categories of usage/demographic profiles. And, I expect more
>> fragmentation, not less, over time. This medium does not pattern after
>> television at all. Assume it does, and you will be wrong. Few
>> advertising executives have come to grips with this yet,....surprisingly.
>
Donna replies:

>This is actually fairly obvious -- not the exact usage patterns, but the
>fact that they don't match TV-watching patterns (at least for anyone who
>actually knows something about being online, as opposed to people who are
>jumping on now, and dragging their old assumptions with them.)

Well, it is continually astonishing to me that people, bright people,
bright ad execs, continue to want to treat Internet as if it were print or
TV or radio.

>
>The internet in general, and WWW in particular, is not TV, not radio, not
>newspapers, not magazines -- but a little bit of all of those, plus a
>variety of interactive things (MUDS and their ilk, chat, mail, etc.), total
>user choice, and the opportunity for anyone who can use it to contribute to
>it. In other words, something new and basically different. We can't expect
>usuage patterns (or much of anything else) to necessarily be like other
>media.

Yes, true. But how do these differences invoke a different advertising
strategy mileau?

Impressions is the concept born of print and broadcast media....on the net,
it makes poor sense compared to alternatives such as self-selecting targets
clicking through to data warehouses on topics they need to know about.
Advertising on the web is far more like direct marketing than broadcast
methods. Clickthroughs on carefully targeted sites can work for more
advertisers than can general ads on general sites.

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