After a couple years at Facebook, Hammerbacher grew restless. He figured that much of the groundbreaking computer science had been done. Something else gnawed at him. Hammerbacher looked around Silicon Valley at companies like his own, Google (GOOG), and Twitter, and saw his peers wasting their talents. "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads," he says. "That sucks."
You can see the fruits of his labor everywhere, most egregiously at 'news' sites who're all chasing that hybrid Huffington Post mix of content and click bait. I'm of the mind that Grandma Gives Birth To Daschund style click-bait stories demean 'straight' news sites, but what do I know. I enjoyed picking up The Weekly World News back in the day, but having it infect the brain of the online media that consumed its readership and killed it doesn't strike me as a desirable outcome.
I've opted out of this frenzy as much as possible, deploying a suite of browser defense systems- AdBlock, Flashblock, Thisblock, Thatblock. Browsing on undefended machines is an unsightly chore, like transitioning from a tennis match at the local Y to a NASCAR race.
I hadn't thought about all the effort devoted to inspiring us to click as a waste, or at least not any more of a waste than advertising in general. But I appreciate the creeping ennui of laboring over such an abstract and basically empty concept.
A few years back one of my online pals, a professor of economics, responded to the news that I sold books by saying (paraphrased due to awful memory) "wow, you're one of the only people I know who actually DOES something for a living".
I'm sure there's a link between my appreciation for physical objects like books and records and actually "doing something" for a living.
May it eventually reveal itself, that I might blog it senseless.
4 comments:
As you know, I work in the advertising trenches. I seem to have the minority voice as somebody who favors "traditional" advertising (radio, TV) over whiz-bang "digital" advertising. They asked for anonymous comment about something recently, and I said I thought spending all that effort to make a banner ad that people don't even see, much less click on, is less worthwhile for our clients than making a TV spot they'll remember for years. But what do I know? I'm a video editor. Of course I think videos are more compelling than banner ads.
I don't understand the mania for banner ads either, but it must 'work' on some level, or they wouldn't all be chasing 'clicks' so desperately.
Of course, I also assumed Time/Warner knew what they were doing when they merged with AOL, so....
No, I honestly think it's industry myopia. "Did you see that awesome web series they did for Doritos? That's so hip, we've got to do that for our clients or we're LAGGING BEHIND." Admittedly, a lot of the cleverest work my agency produced is in the digital field. But I don't think it's as effective as a good TV campaign.
I dunno. To some extent the industry is scrambling to stay relevant in "emerging markets", since everybody TiVos past our spots on TV, or Hulu, or whatever.
Or avoids them entirely by streaming everything on Netflix, like yours truly.
But I like your peer pressure idea- the need to be seen doing SOMETHING, especially if everyone else is doing it, can be overwhelming.
Also, clients probably want to feel hip and it wouldn't do for the competition to offer a bitchen internet package while you were still pushing boring old teevee.
Post a Comment