It’s been said in various places that marketing has to move on from the “fire and forget” methods of a previous era. The tools exist and the methods have been proven out to show that “marketing 2.0″ (active and ongoing engagement) works, and the effectiveness of marketing 1.0 alone strategies (press releases, trade shows, direct marketing, etc.) are losing their effectiveness.
A “fire-and-forget” method that was showing improvement in recent years has also been hit by the recession - online advertising.
According to the March 2009 Advertiser Optimism Report by Advertiser Perceptions, the number of marketers and their ad agents that are feeling optimistic about increasing their online ad spending has dropped 16%.
Beyond merely a reduction in budgets, hopefully this means that economic realities are forcing marketing teams to get more creative and learn new techniques and tools to engage their audiences. This change, if prolonged, could have an impact on web business models as well.
Those sites that are reliant on ad spending for their revenues will start to feel the pinch. Could this be the beginning of a reduction in the amount of quality content that’s available for free on the web? That remains to be seen, but investors have been pushing web platforms and entrepreneurs away from ad supported business models for some time.
