The end of advertising?

Eric Clemons had a great post on TechCrunch laying out his case for why the Internet is destroying traditional advertising not just in print and broadcast media, but also on the Internet.

I find his arguments compelling, but regardless of whether or not push advertising eventually disappears, we can clearly see consumer behavior changing rapidly. Old patterns of passive consumption of media and content are being replaced by users who expect to interact and be in control. People want to do more research before making informed decisions as opposed to impulse or brand based purchases.

In the new paradigm, the most effective way to communicate with our potential customers is to make the information they want available to them when they want it. People who are actively researching products in your market are extremely receptive to learning details about your product. The more you make it possible to learn about the product quickly, the more likely they are to get interested. Simple, traditional marketing collateral built in a web accessible way with good search optimization is obviously a mandatory first step. For software products, online demonstrations are a natural follow on which gives users a painless chance to try the software out for themselves first hand. The only thing which has more impact than the opinion of someone we trust is our own opinion!

As we move from push advertising to pull marketing, one natural question is how do we generate buzz about a product, market segment or possibly even an entirely new market? If we can’t put ads in front of people’s eyeballs, how will they know our product exists to begin with? Here, social networking is the key. I still read traditional technology journals like ComputerWorld and PC World, but I have just as much respect for purely online news sources like The Inquirer and Tom's Hardware. Even for these sites, I find articles here through Google, my RSS reader, digg or delicious where I'm just as likely to find information from a blogger I've never heard of before. Jayson and Christina have lots of posts here on how to get the most out of social networking.