Advertising: Missing the Relationship

An interesting post about the shortcomings of contextual search engine marketing from search engine marketing guru John Bettelle. Without a known relationship between audience, publisher and advertiser there is no trust and no customer intuition being developed. Advertising may be relevant but it's not valuable.

It's this relationship which I find entirely missing in all these contextual, behavioral, paid search networks. Sure, they are "relevant" to either a search, or to the content they match. But they are driven by metadata and the actions of only one of the parties - the content of the publisher for example (AdSense), or the actions of the audience (Claria, Revenue Science, Tacoda, etc.). As far as I know, none are driven by an understanding of the give-and-take that occurs between all three parties in a consensual relationship mediated by the publication. A site which has only AdSense or behavioral advertising fails to value (or monetize) the community connection between audience, publisher, and advertiser. Advertisers in these networks are not intentionally supporting the publication, and by extension they are not supporting the community the publication has created. In essence, they are not being good citizens of the community where their advertising is being displayed.

Contextual, behavioral and paid search advertising techniques may bring you traffic and even build your email list but it is the development of your customer intuition and your 1:1 marketing communications that will build your business.

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