As we all experience, economic crises made it gruesomely visible that every business has to innovate. The advertising market, I believe, is also going through a huge innovation phase.

After being 15 years in this sector and observing carefully the direction of he consumer, I predict that the birth of a new form of advertising agency, combining both digital and traditional skills, is very near.

I think, there won’t be any distinction between traditional and digital in the very near future.

Instead, the main competition in the advertising market will be in becoming the innovated brand new advertising agency. I believe the race goes both ways though. Whether it is digital or traditional, we are all racing for becoming the all-mighty “new generation agency”.

In order to discuss especially the future of advertising and agencies I have formed a group on LinkedIn called New Generation Agency Network:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2090773&trk=hb_side_g

So please come join our group to discuss and share your thoughts about the future of advertising with all the other ad pros.

Regards,

Köksal Abdurrahmanoglu
President & CEO of adinteractive
Founder of istanbul.com & adinteractive

http://www.linkedin.com/in/koksal
koksala.wordpress.com
http://www.twitter.com/koksal
http://www.vimeo.com/koksal

koksal@adinteractive.com.tr
koksal@istanbul.com (mobile)

+90 (212) 274 20 44

“This Amnesty bus stop advertisement, recently erected in Hamburg, changes whether or not someone’s looking at it. Using a built-in camera with eye-tracking technology, it can tell exactly when someone is checking it out. When no one is looking, it shows a man hitting his wife. But when you look right at it, it changes to a picture of the couple looking happy and normal.

“The change only occurs after a brief delay, so that observers understand what’s going on, and get the message.”

More, including image, on Belfast and Beyond: http://blogs.amnesty.org.uk/blogs_entry.asp?eid=3460

In fact, people get far too wound up about this issue. They think Big Brother is watching them, when in fact, all that’s happening is advertisers are working out how to spend their budget in ways that are cost effective and deliver the things that customers want. What’s wrong with that?

And it’s always gone on. When you go into a shop, the sales person immediately sizes you up, decides what woud be best to offer you. And you like that, because you don’t want to be offered things you don’t want.

You get annoyed when you receive direct mail and leaflet drops about things that don’t interest you. So do direct marketers, like me, because I’d rather not waste budget contacting people who won’t respond.

Ever since I started working in direct marketing, 20 years ago, I have targeted people on the basis of their interests and actions.

In our company, informatics is a key element in what we offer clients: that means using statistical methods to classify customers and potential customers into groups who can be targeted differently, depending on their expressed interests and their actions. We’re not peering through your bedroom window, we’re not saying “Let’s target Mr J Smith, we know all about him”, and we’re not using any data that isn’t in the public domain. We’re just using the information that’s out there to put people into groups.

Yes, the maths is reasonably sophisticated, yes, it’s very accurate, but Big Brother it ain’t.

The use of the word ’snoop’ is perhorative. For example, if I was selling cars, is there anything wrong with knowing that Conall McDevitt drives an Alfa, and it’s getting to the age where he might change, so let’s tell him about BMW’s but not Kia’s?

Well, using somebody’s web use to target advertising is just the same. Nobody will be knocking on your door saying, “Now Mr Smith, why did you visit this particular website?” They won’t, because the targeting uses aggregate data to put people into groups, not personalised information to look at you individually.

Nothing to fear, in fact, as consumers, we all benefit.