CGM & the False Paradox of Contextual Advertising

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by: Josh Hawkins

There is a growing debate over the viability of consumer generated media (or user generated content) as a venue for marketers to engage in serious consumer branding. The problem stems from the idea that the context of brand messaging is as important as the message itself.

Advertising is never experienced in a vacuum. Instead, advertising is colored by the medium, media and interpersonal environment in which it is experienced. Placing advertising in the context of CGM has the effect of quite literally "framing" the brand experience and potentially altering the ad's intended message or positioning.

Many marketers are willing to take the risk to achieve their "reach objectives" using networks such as Google's Adsense. And more and more of these networks are enabling content owners of all stripes to opt into these advertising opportunities and monetize their online content.

However, these networks provide marketers with only the most limited control by loosely defining the context of the brand experience by matching ads to webpage content in the network. But the quality of the content is not policed. There are no widely held normative guidelines applied across ad networks to help marketers sort or filter for their own quality standards. Given this lack of control, brand police (who spend countless hours fine tuning pixel perfect graphics and honing just the right word or call to action) shudder to think of having their ad displayed on a amateurish website or, heaven forbid, a BLOG!

To brand police around the world, I say GET OVER IT! We don't live in a world anymore where we have rigid control over brand experiences. We live in a remix culture. Unless the fundamentals of search algorithms change anytime soon, consumers looking for information using Internet technologies will continue to find peer-driven content before they ever stumble across official brand communications. That's just a fact. Search gives preferential treatment to frequently updated, link-rich content – defining characteristics of CGM. What's more, online purchasing decisions are influenced most heavily by word-of-mouth endorsement and peer testimonials above and beyond exposure to print or broadcast advertising.

The question is not one of loosing control over brand experiences. That already happened. The question is do we have enough confidence in our brands to participate in a public dialog and engage an open debate with our detractors? In fact, to not leverage ad networks that permeate niche communities and long tail consumer demand with our brand advertising misses the defining opportunity presented in the Web 2.0 world – bringing conversations and understanding about brand value and promise into alignment, more accurately, more efficiently, and to greater ends.

Original Post: http://splinteredchannels.blogs.com/weblog/2006/02/cgm_the_paradox.html