Sunday, March 22, 2009

Is Advertising Necessary?

Mobile advertising continues its relentless growth, while Internet revenues are falling. As with print advertisers, especially newspapers, that continue losing revenue to online placement, the community of mobile advertisers, mobile ad networks and mobile publishers is dominating worldwide advertising. So much for mobile.

But this post goes beyond mobile ads. It’s about the necessity of any advertising. Periodically, we should expose our minds to opposing opinions and views that contradict–and even imperil–our business models.

Such is the case with Eric Clemons at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Clemons just posted an article (available in PDF form) on TechCrunch. His predictions about the demise of PC-based Internet advertising and his comments on social media and mobile ad personalization are controversial with a grain of truth and 100 grains of speculation and flabbergast.

Clemons generally opposes advertising “pushed” to potential customers who haven’t requested the ads. He believes that Internet and other advertising is similar to email spam and non-participatory, shatters the Internet experience and will ultimately fail. In Clemons view, pushing ad messages to people not seeking them is a grave sin.

Read the "rest of the story" on IM-Mobile

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