In online advertising, there will be no FuckedCompanies this time
Philip Kaplan's FuckedCompany, the site that chronicled Silicon Valley's downfall at the turn of the millennium, is mercifully back in spirit as FuckedGoogle. But Saul Hansell doesn't think the site will find material during the latest economic downturn. In a Bits blog post discussing the prospects of a contraction in the advertising market, he writes: "I'm going to say something that makes me cringe: it really is different this time." Below, the post is cut down from Hansell's 650 words, so you can get back to selling ads all the faster.
Online ads in 2000 were baseless branding: dot com noise to justify a public offering, or big companies trying to show they "got it." When things got tough, all these campaigns got the ax. This time, however bad it gets, it will affect the online companies less. We are in the middle of a significant shift of marketing money to the Web. Marketers have found some online methods actually bring them sales. Internet advertising is tied to what people are buying. Somebody is going to buy a car tomorrow, so if you are a carmaker, you don't cut back your Google ad for the keyword "convertible" or your banner on that hotrod site. You may scale back that expensive TV campaign. The publisher of a big site said his business will hold up this year, but if the economy continues to languish next year will be much tougher.
