Re: [projectvrm] Demand based advertising

[Jim Bursch < >]

This is where the kook ideologue in me comes out.

The ad-supported media model is fundamentally flawed and there is no fixing it in a world where the cost of composing and transmitting a message/data is virtually nil.

Ad-supported media fosters a culture of freeloading in the same manner that socialism fosters a culture of dependence.

As people are empowered with tools like those envisioned by VRM, they will be less dependent (or tolerant) of the interference of advertising in their lives and their culture. When that time comes, I believe that a culture of patronage will arise (facilitated by things like Crosby Fitch's Contingency Market) and people will be able to support hundreds of Kurt Vonneguts, not just one.

I believe that ad-supported media is corrupt and corrupting and will eventually die as a significant influence on our culture and our economy. Advertising will not die because there will always be a need to send information to people who are not actively seeking the information. That's why I am working on MyMindshare -- a tool that works for both people and advertisers. (sorry, I would be remiss if I didn't plug my project).

We are in a sucky transition period where the old model is failing and flailing and the new tools are still under construction (or yet to be conceived).

Jim Bursch
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On 6/11/2012 8:20 AM, Don Marti wrote:

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begin Jim Bursch quotation of Sun, Jun 10, 2012 at 07:00:48AM -0700:

The only point I'm trying to make is that advertising can be
valuable to us people, and I'm trying to figure out how we can
realize that value while reducing its cost to us in the form of
wasted time, attention, money, resources, corruption, etc.

Advertising at its best can help pay for great
writing, photography, and other forms of art.

Kurt Vonnegut got out of the business of running a
Saab dealership because he could make a better living
writing for magazines -- during a peak time for print
advertising, when magazine writers' words were the
same price as today and smokes were $0.20/pack.

Here's the problem: data-driven, user-targeted,
or, to use the technical term for it, "creepy"
advertising is reducing the incentive to produce
the art and writing, since it's more cost-effective
to stick an ad on the least expensive "top 10 list"
that the targeted user will look at.

I'm working on going back and filling in the details
on the ad targeting problem, if anyone is interested...

  http://zgp.org/~dmarti/business/creepiness-and-conventional-wisdom-part-1/
  http://zgp.org/~dmarti/business/wherefore-do-the-honest-prosper/