Seth Radwell, President of the e-Scholastic Division of Scholastic gave an interesting talk in Chicago this week at the Internet Retailer Conference. One of his key points was that the Internet creates “enablers” that allow retailers to change the traditional relationship they have with customers. In particular, he stressed the following three enablers:

1. Transparency-don’t hide anything from your customers
2. Control-give customers control over how they gain value from you
3. Simplicity-make it simple and easy

There are many examples of how Internet retailers are applying these enablers in new ways online, but what struck me was how far we still need to go for online advertising to catch up to these pillars of customer value. If users are in control, why do we continue to see intrusive, annoying advertising (like pop-ups talked about by Jeremy Wagstaff here) that interrupt and annoy? And why are customers in the dark about paid search bid rates and completely cut off from the daily online advertising auction that creates millions of $’s of value for companies like Google and Yahoo?

At Jellyfish, we believe the future of advertising is to create advertising units that customers find valuable in and of themselves. Technology enables companies to bring customers directly into the advertising value chain and create an environment where it is easy for them to seek out valuable messages on their terms. Transparency, Control of Value, and Simplicity. It is the future of online advertising.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 9th, 2006 at 8:45 am and is filed under Transparent Advertising, Online Retailing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.