The relentless pursuit of shrinking attention -- part 1

Seems like everyone wants to be a hammer when the pile of nails is getting smaller. Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 uses Microsoft's adCenter launch to declare that Microsoft is no longer a software company. But he goes even further with his analysis with this table:

Microsoft's growth strategy: ADVERTISING
Google's growth strategy: ADVERTISING
Yahoo's growth strategy: ADVERTISING
MySpace's growth srategy: ADVERTISING
Nearly every Web 2.0 startup's growth strategy: ADVERTISING
Network and Cable TV's growth strategy: (online) ADVERTISING

But then he notes that a advertisers are creating Internet content themselves like Subservient Chicken (Burger King) or Internet films (BMW) instead of buying ads. The result: just at the moment that nearly every Internet company has pinned their growth on on-line advertising, the big on-line advertisers are going direct to the consumer via the net.

Blackfriars' marketing research data about advertising reinforces Scott's analysis. Advertising spends are going down, and non-traditional marketing spends are going up. Scott's right: this is a recipe for disaster. And the notes the likely outcome in his followup article, What if no one will pay for content? In that article, he notes that Internet users go to sites like MySpace.com or Flickr.com not to give attention, but to get it. And that says advertising on those sites just is never going to be a good business model for them.

Advertising as a business made sense when content was scarce and attention was plentiful. But with the boom in content and the decline of attention, the tables have turned. More on what that means in part two of this article.

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