Is advertising’s future collaborative?
Samedi 13 octobre 2007
Publicis, the French advertising juggernaut, launched last summer a collaborative platform (Blogbang, still in public beta version for now), aiming to get into the online advertising market. The pitch: companies leave their ad specifications on the website, and members have to follow them to create an ad. Downstream, bloggers or website owners can choose to display Blogbang ads and earn money depending on their traffic.
Although it generated conscequent buzz in the French blogosphere, it did not yet convince many bloggers. Most criticism pointed at the mysterious payment mechanism: revenue is said to be much more fluctuant and lower than Ad-Words one’s. As far as I’m concerned I couldn’t try it because Wordpress doesn’t allow scripts on blogs, but I must admit that the idea of “crowdvertising” seduced me. Blogbang allows you to be an advertising agency, dealing with clients’ expectations, and earning money for your work. On top of that, the most creative ads I saw in the last few months were unofficial (see my previous post about the IPhone). Most creative people are not in advertising agencies, they are part of the huge community which made what we call Web 2.0, posting comments on blogs, videos on YouTube, songs on Jamendo or pictures on MySpace.
But the fact is advertising agencies are still here. Despite all the buzz on the web, Apple ordered an official campain for the IPhone release. A brand is too much a big deal for today companies to lose control over it. Marketing specifications are to complex (and confidential) to be delt with by amateur advertisers. For this reason, ads on Blogbang are moderated upstream by customer companies. That may be the reason why so few ads are online 3 months after the site opened (320 only, including many “official” ads made by agencies).
Companies advertising on Blogbang either don’t have enough money to hire an agency, or their marketers don’t have clear strategic vision to chose a specific segment and a tone to adress it. In any case, I would advice them to think again before releasing their brand open-source.