And to think back when the www was taking off, Wired had a front page piece on
the death of advertising :-).
Ian
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Louis Proyect
> Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2001 6:44 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [PEN-L:9099] Monkeys on tricycles
>
>
> This NY Times article might be a "Rosetta Stone" for interpreting the bear
> market of 2001. It explains why only one-half of one percent of all website
> ads are read. (I take great pride in never having clicked one of these
> stupid things, especially the ubiquitous "can you hit the monkey on the
> tricycle" ad, whatever it was selling.) This means that a high-flyer like
> Yahoo would sooner or later hit the brick wall, as would every "content"
> based website like salon.com, etc. So when advertising revenue dries up,
> Internet startups are forced into bankruptcy. When you have a bankruptcy,
> you have fire sales. What these outfits had to sell was PC's, routers and
> servers. When this stuff hits the second-hand market, especially at a time
> of dwindling demand, there is less of a market for new stuff. That's why
> Compaq, CISCO and Sun are not meeting earnings quotas. When these companies
> begin to lay off people, there is less demand for SUV's, vacation travel
> expenses and new homes. Thus the earnings expectations for Chrysler,
> American Airlines and construction companies is effected. All this because
> of monkeys on tricycles!
>
> ===
>
> NY Times, March 17, 2001
>
> Web Site Ads, Holding Sway, Start to Blare
>
> By SAUL HANSELL
>
> Until recently, advertising on the Internet stayed in one place and didn't
> speak until spoken to, or at least clicked on.
>
> Now, as even the biggest Internet sites struggle with a sharp decline in ad
> revenue, sites are letting their remaining advertisers occupy a much larger
> portion of their pages, as well as create ads that move, make noise and
> otherwise do whatever it takes to attract attention.
>
> Big advertisers, especially the traditional companies that spend billions
> burnishing their images on television, have long complained that the oblong
> spaces they have been able to buy on Internet sites are too small to tell a
> persuasive story. But most sites were afraid that bigger and bolder
> advertisements would irritate their users. Now that sites have plenty of
> users and fewer advertisers, their priorities are shifting quickly.
>
> For example, a cork pops out of a Champagne bottle in an advertisement
> recently placed atop the movie page of the iWon.com portal. It bounds
> behind the listings and over the reviews and ultimately crashes into an
> image of a cremation urn in another ad on the side of the page.
>
> If that's not enough to catch a user's attention, the loud crashing sound
> surely is. (Those who click on either ad are whisked to a site selling
> videotapes of "Meet the Parents," a movie in which a cork and an urn have
> an unfortunate coming together.)
>
> "Too many people involved with the Internet have been too shy about
> advertising," said Scott Kurnit, chief Internet officer of Primedia, the
> publishing company that bought About .com, the big Web portal he founded.
> "The ads are too small and not intrusive enough."
>
> So About.com is redesigning its site to permit larger advertisements and
> ones that incorporate 5- to 15- second video clips. As with television,
> where ads eat up eight minutes every half-hour to pay for what the viewer
> sees, Mr. Kurnit says Web users will need to accept these new types of
> advertising.
>
> "If I'm giving you something of value at no cost, I will charge you with
> your time, not your money," he said.
>
> Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/17/technology/17WEB.html
>
>
> Louis Proyect
> Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
>
