• by Mark Naples , December 5, 2003

Cedar Run, PA 17727 - Back in early August, I wrote about the stunning and inexpensive availability of broadband access in Loreto, Baja, California Sur, Mexico, as well as about how rich media-styled ads were appearing on television stations throughout that country.

Here in north central PA, just five months later, I've taken a trip in the time machine back to 1995. Filing this column as I am, via the one and only means available within 40 miles - a dial up 28.8 line, I'm reminded how the majority of Americans access our media, and about how myopic we in the business of interactive marketing and publishing can be at times. All these Web pages taking far longer to load than it takes me to write this sentence, with the static-only ads coming first and staying latest, and pop-ups, pop-ups, pop-unders. This is hardly worth it. No wonder there's such a pre-disposition against our medium by so many consumers and brands.

When was the last time you tried accessing the Web via a remote dial-up? Even at 56K or so, it feels like penance. To still too many Americans, the Web is a difficult part of their leisure day, not part of their functioning lives as it is for most of us in this industry. Even for those who do have broadband access, some of what they spend much of their time doing on the Web is something they are struggling with - Search. I'm reminded of this because of how reducing this damnable dial-up experience is.

Seen through the eyes of this American consumer - the majority still using a dial-up connection - why not be miffed at paid search and pay for placement? If all I want to do is trust a simple means of finding Web pages, and it takes as much as 15 seconds for each page to load, the pain involved with finding something other than what I asked for is increased exponentially. Tonight, I'm thinking that's too easy for us to forget. And, with trends in Search indicating that some changes are afoot, let's think about it for a second from the aforementioned perspective of the American consumer.

Paid placement is such a great business for many of us, and sponsored links, clearly called out, garner great response for the companies paying for them. I'm so not against them. In fact, I think they're a marvelous way for leading brands to assert their leadership, and for upstarts to get recognized. I'm not talking about the clearly sponsored links.

I'm talking about the kind of paid positioning that is less clearly sponsored. How many thousand consumers did it take complaining to the US Federal Trade Commission before the requests for meetings and hearings began last month? WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) is an old acronym, but what all consumers really want is something they truly deserve and which we should give them. At the risk of pissing off some of the companies in paid positioning whose clients' links appear in the meat of the search responses, won't the construct of Search as a media unto itself have to adhere at some point to the same scrutiny as other media? Advertisements have to be called out as advertisements, no? I'm in the business of PR, and have been for 16 years. If I paid a reporter or publication for placing my story, I'd be out of business fast.

Maybe the Search construct will have to adhere to the guidelines of other media, and maybe not. Remember when people thought that Web media would never look like traditional media - an eternity of three years ago? Well, look what happened. The media brands matter online too, now. And privacy? Remember how that was never going to be relevant either? How many of you who believed that nonsense also believed that there would never be a do-no-call list, let alone a do-no-spam list?

Until we get closer to something along those WYSIWYG lines throughout all our industry, we'll remain something of a non-entity, if not a pariah to many consumers. And that, like those damnable pop-ups and pup-unders, will hurt us all. By this time next year, I predict that all of these items I'm complaining about herein will be regarded along the same lines as this stupid 28.8 line I'm stuck on - a relic. Something to be endured as an exception born of necessity and maybe expedience, and not really an essential part of the medium. At least I hope so. I seem to dwell on this point a lot in this space, but I'll say it again: the consumer is always right. And this suddenly countrified consumer has a different perspective after seeing the Web from the molasses-slow lens of a 28.8 dial up.