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10 Online Advertising Trends that Should be Ignored

Advertising Age writer Mark Simon wrote a funny, sarcastic and brutally honest look at some of the trends in online content and advertising today. In the article entitled “Ditch the Lunatic Web Content Crazes – Beyond the Hype: The 10 Most Asinine Trends Online and Why You Should Ignore Them” he listed 10 “harebrained” trends that are most likely to fail:

1. Virtual reality such as Second Life (I wrote about Second Life previously, though for the life of me, I really can’t make my avatar go past the Orientation stage – LOL)
2. Phony recommendation industry such as pay per post and astroturfing which the writer described as “phony grass-roots marketing using blogs”
3. Smart ads which works best in theory but not in practice
4. Neglect of search engine marketing (this pertains to the marketing officers of big ad agencies who focus on multimillion-dollar TV and print campaigns)
5. Audio-reliant video pre-roll spots when most viewers mute and ignore the ads while waiting for the video they want to see
6. Human powered search engines — a concept the writer describes as “ill conceived”
7. Knee-jerk Algorithmic Media Buying referring to Google’s forays into non-search media and companies buying into it
8. Dangers of behavioral targeting
9. Twitter and microblogging which the writer describes as “mindless stream of ephemera” and should not be considered a viable advertising platform
10. Intrusive mobile marketing

Read the article and judge for yourself whether the 10 trends he listed are indeed worthless and should go away.