• by Seana Mulcahy , January 8, 2007

Well, hello and happy belated New Year, dear readers. I've had a coupla weeks off due to the holidays. I have to say it's been weird not writing. There's been a heck of a lot of reading to keep me and all of us busy. I won't bore you with my predictions, as I've already hit the ground running on 2007. Besides, my biggest prediction is that you're sick of 'em by now.

That being said, what's up with brands bashing advertising? And hell, yes, I am quite biased when I ask this question. Well, have you heard the recent hoopla with craigslist? Founder Craig Newmark always said he wouldn't offer advertising or accept advertising. Just take a quick glance at the site. The ugly blue text geometrically placed on its pages is just that--ugly. However, it works.

Don't get me wrong, I love craigslist. I think someday Craig or eBay (who owns 25% of the company) or some other company, will come along and allow advertising on craigslist. Let's face it--most sites not only want reach, they want community. It's one thing getting someone to your site. What's even better is getting them to refer their friends, family, whomever to your site. The holy grail is getting those people to come back and come back again. In my opinion, not many sites out there really get how to build community. Craigslist does.

With a community-based site comes very heartfelt, often opinionated mentalities. For instance, craigslist offers users a one-click ability to flag a post as suspicious or spam. Makes me want that feature on most sites. With the no-ad policy, folks are doing just that--advertising--or, the more appropriate name, spamvertising. Now I know another buzzword for the ole collection. Simply put, it is an ad disguised as a classified.

Or how about under "For sale/cars and trucks?" I guess that means a car dealership cannot post a car they have on sale? Or how about a parts distributor? I recently had to find a weird foreign part for my car. There was no way I was going to pay the 400% markup at the only dealer within a 30 mile radius of where I live. So of course I went online. I knew I could never find what I was looking for on craigslist, so I went to eBay Motors of course. I found the part quickly, easily and for a third of the cost.

I could go on and on here. Let me just say, I'm by no means advocating all advertising. First of all it's my livelihood, second, I don't like to be interrupted, insulted or imposed upon, and third, a lot of advertising sucks. So don't write to me if you are some random ad hater. I am not here to represent all ads bad and good. All I am saying is, why not become a hotbed for smart advertising in addition to becoming the spamvertising cops of all things community? Check out the Spin blog. Rant, rave, do whatever you want except advertise.

Craigslist's terms of service clearly state that "affiliate marketing, junk mail, spam, or unsolicited commercial advertisement" are not allowed. Also, one cannot contact another user about other services, products, or commercial interests if that user has requested not to be contacted.

So the site has flagging. Loser spamvertisers got around that. Now the company is getting quite a bit of buzz by enlisting ISPs and law enforcement to track down the culprits. Well, kudos--I hope they get 'em. However, spamvertising is not advertising. It never was, never will and never could be.

Why can't we segregate faux advertising from real advertising here? Why do all these Web innovators hate advertising? Here's an idea. Can't someone come up with a model that is: respectful to a user's time, nonintrusive, smart, controllable and clever? Is this so out of range? Put it this way, if I was looking for a place to book a family vacation and I clicked on my city's vacation rental link, I wouldn't have that many options beyond local geography. Why couldn't an ad for an airline be placed there? Or how about the search box? Why couldn't it model a PPC environment? For example if I were to click my city (Boston), then click vacation rentals, and once there type Disney in the search box, I'd probably come up with a few to a dozen links to users' postings. Most of the postings would be people renting their timeshare, condos, houses, cabins, etc. This would be a perfect place for me to find airfares for Florida as well. What's so wrong with that, Craig?