Second Breath of Internet advertising

"An advertisement is a non-personnel statement and promotion of its ideas, goods or services by an identifiable advertiser who pays in any way ." In 1948, The American Marketing Association's definition Committee (the Committee on Definitions of The American Marketing Association) defined the advertisement and made several changes in The year of 1963, formed the advertisement definition that has had a big impact so far.

The most important aspect of this definition is that there must be an identifiable advertiser in the advertisement. In addition, this definition emphasizes that advertisements are paid and "non-personnel ". These are important features of modern advertising. Internet advertisement is also defined in this definition. However, due to the essential characteristics of Internet interaction and sharing, the Internet advertisement industry currently has two major statuses: first, advertisers use the Internet as one of their product and service advertising media types, and second, advertisers develop their own Internet Services (website construction and expansion of e-commerce on other platforms) to promote marketing.

Regardless of the status, the current Internet advertisement in the industrial perspective is largely a copy of traditional TV advertisements and offline outdoor advertisements. Although many creative interactions have been added, however, these technical links are still at the edge of the Internet industry chain. The backbone of this industry chain is the advertising agency that aggregates channels, procurement and advertising businesses. Like traditional advertisers, they create a large number of website advertising platforms, including various portals, vertical portals, communities, and personal websites. Agents rely on these resources to wait for advertisers to come to the door to do business, and send advertisements almost forcibly to consumers.

When the entire advertising industry talks about new business models and new fields on the Internet, advertisers and consumers are gradually alienated. In Figure 1, we can see the composition of such an industrial chain.

Obviously, as shown in the figure, after capital restructuring and mergers and acquisitions, an oligarchy advertising agency has become the core of the entire industry. Ad agencies draw on advertisers in the upstream field. In the midstream, they are surrounded by several small enterprises or studios that provide technical and creative support. In the downstream, they create various large and medium-sized websites, and webmasters. This situation is like a warrior in ancient times. The advertising agency, wearing heavy armor, goes directly to the consumers in the war, and says, "Look at my ads and buy my customers' products !"

This industry chain model is reminiscent of the TV industry that is not yet fully market-oriented. In the domestic TV advertising field, CCTV and provincial TV stations use their high-quality media platforms and channels, has become the core enterprise of the industry. It cannot be said that under such circumstances, the interests of advertisers and consumers are not maximized.

Obviously, this is not in line with the spirit of the Internet.

Network service is a black box

The Internet provides a new and more efficient way of information communication. The connotation of advertisement is to make the audience obtain the information as the advertisers hope through the processing and dissemination of information. The Internet has already become one of its own in content creation and information dissemination. Do you still need to follow the development process of TV advertisements in the advertising field?

It is time to place advertisers and consumers in the leading position of the advertising industry! Each Internet service industry can constitute an Internet black box. In this way, advertisers only need to consider entering the black box, and the black box is processed by themselves, effective output to the consumer, and then the consumer buys the product of The Advertiser. Such a black box I/O (Figure 2) process simplifies the complex transfer process of the Internet advertising value chain. It is a more efficient way of organizing production relations and will promote the development of productivity in this industry.

From the two figures above, we can see that advertising agencies, network media platforms, technical and creative support, market analysis institutions, and other nearby Internet services should be included in a black box. The interests of all parties in the black box can be integrated as needed, and the value chains in the black box can be different in different regions. However, you only need to provide a standard and unified interface for advertisers to access and provide clear and clear information to the target audience. As for the techniques used in the black box (such as cross-media theory, multi-dimensional associated targeted advertising, practical marketing theory, customer guide theory, etc.), there is no need for a fixed standard. In other words, it is to combine the traditional advertising industry, such as advertising channels, advertising agencies, advertising producers, and research institutions into an industry, which can be referred to as the "online advertising service ". In the Internet advertising field, enterprises look for alliances and competitors in this black box and develop in a public business atmosphere. This is the black box in the Internet advertising industry chain: accept input, internal processing, and outward output.

The inflection point of the industry chain is just in sight

In fact, in the big Internet industry, the boundaries between advertising and marketing, the boundaries between the audience and users, and the boundaries between the media and media are further blurred. Due to the fragmentation and decentralization of media, the decentralization of audience has become an inevitable trend. Sometimes it is impossible to control commercial behaviors to intrude into public spaces. Under such circumstances and characteristics, the advertising industry, which has extended from traditional outdoor advertisements to the Internet, will inevitably undergo some qualitative changes caused by structural replacement.

The time for this qualitative change is approaching.

In December 22, 2008, Sina merged the outdoor digital advertisement business of Focus Media, which made many industry experts feel "incomprehensible ". However, no matter what the purpose or impact is, it is indeed a process of shuffling and re-allocating resources. In the above ideal internet advertising industry chain, this process occurs inside the black box and is reasonable and inevitable. The adjustment and change of the industrial chain structure will naturally happen with the shuffling of the market.

Throughout the 2008 s, the baptism of capital and market mergers and acquisitions formed several camps for each part of the advertising industry chain, including the Internet advertising industry, the competition and game between upstream and downstream of the industrial chain have become very obvious and fierce. This directly results in a high concentration of media purchases. Meanwhile, competition in the media market is intensifying, especially in the video and professional vertical fields. Even so, due to the fragmentation and decentralization of the media, the scale effect of the media serving effect is weakened. In the competition game between the media and agents, media status and bargaining power tend to be weak. It is no exaggeration to say that Internet advertising has reached the time of revolution.

The gate of the times has been opened, and a new wave is approaching. Productivity will always evolve towards a more advanced direction, which makes us look forward to a more efficient and reasonable industry.