A few years after it was written, it seemed like the Cluetrain Manifesto really had it right. Back in, say, 2001, advertising on the Internet was broken. Banner ads didn’t work, tracking was little more than guessing, and buying ads was a time consuming thing which involved negotiating with different partners, dealing with different creativities and different ad-servers etc. It really looked like the web was a different ballgame, and companies better start doing something different.
Then Google came to the rescue. Pretty soon, you could buy ads next to search results, and then contextual ads, and then graphical ads, all from one single interface, one single check, no negotiations and for a price which seemed to make sense. For those who didn’t get it, or didn’t want to get their hands too dirty, search ad agencies were there to take care of their budgets. And just like nobody had ever been fired for doing Tv ads, the same exact thing was going to be true for ads on Google.
For most companies, “marketing” was once again something which had little to do with their product. Or with their market. But with the success of YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, came a host of consultants that told companies that “in social media” they had to be cool, hip and down to earth. But there was no need to panic, or to change their ways, for they could do it for them, and provide them with stats about how things were going, and reassure them that there is nothing to worry about…