Some time around
Thanksgiving, I tried to write an article of thanks. At the time, I couldn’t
think of anything to be thankful for… anything that had to do with our industry
that is. Working in performance-based internet advertising is a thankless job.
Getting paid means living a transactional lifestyle, like being a salesman on
commission knowing that no money will come in without any sales taking place. As
I touch upon in this weeks Trends, our business has evolved tremendously. It went from
being barely worthy of a handout in the eyes of the mainstream advertisers to
squarely on the radar of the big spenders. In the not too distant future, ours
will soon be the coveted “it” media.
https://www.lynxtrack.com/signup.php
My
earlier allusion at not having anything for which to be thankful aside, those of
us in the industry have a lot that we should be appreciative of. Despite the
competitive, always-changing nature of our business, we work in one where the
ultimate value of our business comes from what we think. Equally important, the
internet provides us the ability to execute on what we think, faster than is
possible in any other industry. Within less than a day, a new site or product can
be launched. For an existing product, it is possible to test and refine
literally dozens of variations. At the risk of sounding too 1998, from an
information standpoint, the only restriction on how fast change can be
implemented is the people making the changes.
Another quite remarkable
thing about our industry is that we do hundreds of millions of dollars but have
almost nothing to show for it. Contrast this to the non-digital world where you
seek out and interact with an actual product. Tonight for instance, I went to
the store looking for some luggage. Being somewhat thrifty I went to Ross. On
the way back, I stopped to get some gas for my car. All throughout my evening, I
interacted with very tangible goods. Someone worked on the car I drove and could
tell others that is what they helped to make. The same is true for those working
at the store or those that made the luggage, or refined the gas. When they tell
others what they do, it clicks. When we tell people what we do, they look at us
funny.
The lack of
understanding, regarding what we do, in part comes from the ethereal nature of the internet.
How do you touch the internet? It took five years for people to come closer to
accepting that simply buying access to the net doesn’t entitle them to 100% free
content. Then again, if you are of the younger generation, you expect everything
to be free online but you don’t get upset when its not. Yet despite this
intangible nature surrounding what we do, this year we can give thanks to
internet advertising being more mainstream. Were you to say you worked in the
biz back in 2000 people just assumed that meant some high flying stock or new
technology; they didn’t see it as a logical extension of other forms of
advertising simply applied to a new medium.
This year, we went from being
outcasts to being OutKast. In other words, our hard work is starting to pay off,
and there is almost nothing better than that. Our parents still may not
understand what we do, and we still may not be able to easily point to our
products, but the others outside the space now understand that information
exchange and market creation qualifies as legitimate and non-trivial activities.
Like Scrooge, I too have
found the internet spirit and am thankful for what it has become. That our
industry has the promise, it does make sitting still tough. It’s either that, or the
ADD which seems so common, but looking into that will have to wait until another
article. All joking aside, I’d like to end this article and the year with
another round of thanks, not to the industry but to the people in it who make it
what it is. Without you, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to share with you.
Without you, so much of what makes this space so great to work in would be
missing. Thank you, and I look forward to serving you in 2005.
Jay Weintraub
