• by Bill McCloskey , January 22, 2002

I’ve been thinking lately about the promise of online advertising. Let’s take targeting. We all talk about it but has anyone actually experienced an example of it? I mean, based on the types of advertising I receive in the form of pop-unders and pop-ups, I seem to be doing something online that makes people think I am desperate to place tiny hidden cameras all around my home.

Now, I spend a lot of money online. If you wanted to target me, I should receive advertisements from bookstores, magic shops, guitar manufacturers, online Blues radio stations. Or let’s get closer to the Web: I’m always looking for a better hosting service for my website, better services for my newsletter especially those that will get more targeted people to sign up for it, software that will read my log files with more granularity, etc.

But I’ve never received an ad for any of these services or products. Instead, I receive info on hidden cameras, travel sites, hidden cameras, credit card companies, casinos, hidden cameras… how did my online profile get to be “male, peeping tom with bad credit and gambling problem, needs to get out of town right away.”

These days, the Web feels more and more like Pottersville from It’s a Wonderful Life. You know: the town that Bedford Falls changes into once Jimmy Stewart is out of the picture. Pawn Shops, Burlesque, and Dime a Dance Girls have replaced the Savings and Loan and the corner Drug Store, at least from an advertising standpoint.

Some sites I go to have driven me away all together. Take Yahoo’s Groups. I subscribe to a couple of Yahoo’s Groups, mostly hobby-related chat sites. But in the last few weeks they have become all but un-navigable. That’s because after about every other posting, I am high jacked to an advertising page for hidden cameras and have to click on a “continue” link to read the message board. The danger in this sort of advertising is that it becomes disruptive to the point where I’ve given up going to the site completely.

I’ve always discounted the naysayers who worried that people would download ad-blocking software in droves. Only the tech nerds do that, I reasoned. But in Pottersville, I’m not so smug. The proliferation of pop-unders, hijacking techniques, mind numbing creative, untargeted spam, the lack of imagination, advertising sans human emotion, warmth, or humor have made me rethink that position.

This is not advertising that speaks to me as an online consumer. This is advertising that makes me cringe. I can’t tell you the last time I had an experience like the time I first encountered the HP Butterfly banner created by Freestyle Interactive for Goodby, Silverstein and Partners. This was online advertising that was memorable, creative, and beautiful to watch. I remember sitting there stunned when I first saw it. But that was over two years ago, in the days of Bedford Falls. I live in Pottersville now.

I love advertising. I’m the kind of person who only watches the Super Bowl to see the commercials. I think, at its best, advertising is an art form like any other. Books like “Confessions of an Advertising Man” sit in prominent places on my bookshelf and are well thumbed.

But, despite better technology, bigger audiences, and a growing chunk of overall media consumption, online advertising creative has all the excitement of a Supermarket Pennysaver.

Let me give you an example of opportunity lost. My family’s newest favorite show is “Trading Spaces” on The Learning Channel. We are addicted. The premise for the show is that two couples “trade spaces” and, along with a decorator, redecorate a room in the others house. For the last two weeks they have been having a “Trading Spaces” marathon and my wife and two children have been glued. But when the commercial comes on, we all rush to the Internet to look up things on the Trading Spaces website.

Guess what? Not a single ad for companies who advertise on the show. Here is a perfect opportunity to sell me some home decoration items. Instead I get house ads for other shows on TLC. What a waste. What a targeting opportunity lost. What is The Learning Channel thinking? And what were the advertisers on the show thinking by not demanding an integrated deal.

Help me Clarence! I want to live again!

-- Bill McCloskey is Founder and CEO of Emerging Interest, an organization dedicated to educating the Internet advertising and marketing industry about rich media and other emerging technologies.