SHOUTING LOUDER AND MORE OFTEN IS NOT THE SOLUTION

DMEXCO panel: ‘The Fog: Brands in the digital fog - how does advertising reach acceptance and target groups?’

Advertising is not communication per se, but an offer of communication. People can accept or reject this offer. A shouted offer is perceived by recipients as noise and makes it more difficult to receive the actual advertising message. Stimuli do not have the same effect. Just because I shout louder and more often doesn't mean my message is better received.

The OWM panel on the topic of ‘Brands in the fog’, how to regain acceptance for advertising among people, overcome resistance and reach target groups, was urgently needed. Especially to show what we as an advertising industry can do differently and better. I was therefore delighted to discuss the topic with Shanine Chaudhry, Nancy Julius and Uwe Storch under the moderation of Catrin Bialek.

We must finally use online advertising formats that do justice to the possibilities of interaction with recipients on the one hand and people's usage behaviour on the other. Similar to the introduction of earlier media, we have so far mainly tried to broadcast print, audio and moving image advertising online. And that seems anachronistic.

The internet has upset the balance of a functioning ecosystem

The fact that online ads are booked, tracked and targeted programmatically has no relevance for the recipient. They are still presented with banners or videos. The most memorable achievement of the adtech industry is to have unbalanced an ecosystem between media, advertisers and people that has functioned well for over a hundred years.

How and, more importantly, what was thrown out of balance? The media produced and published content that people wanted to consume and advertisers financed the media in the hope of capturing some of people's attention and directing it towards their advertising messages. The internet has enabled many tech and data companies to create value in this system based on the collected user data. The users and often the media have not participated in this value creation. And for far too long, people were not made aware of this. This is how the AdTech and MarTech industries brought about the GDPR and TTDSG.

Amazon, Netflix and Uber show how it's done

Other industries have long since adapted to the new possibilities of the internet. See the change in people's media usage behaviour when consuming music, films, series and games. How the way we communicate with people in other places on a daily basis has changed. How the financial, dating, travel and mobility sectors and, above all, e-commerce have changed our purchasing behaviour. And in 2022, do we as advertisers really believe that it is still appropriate to force advertising on people?

Advertising must be relevant: then it is useful and perhaps even loved

The Internet is slowly ‘growing up’ as a medium. Let's remember: the first radio programmes were readings of books, the first TV programmes, radio programmes with pictures. Let's face it, banners and video ads today are nothing more than adaptations of print and TV adverts. Thomas Koch points out a similar idea: ‘With posters we have 2,000 years of experience, with newspapers we have been dealing with 400 years, with radio almost 100, with TV 65 years. We only have 20 years of experience with the Internet. In the advertising industry, we must finally dare to change our mindset, adapt to the new environment and realise that it is not necessary to put advertising in front of people's noses on the Internet.

Perhaps advertising will then succeed not only in not disturbing people, but also in being useful and, in very rare cases, even being loved again.