Advertising in the New Year

I just finished reading an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal (paid subscription required to access full article) about advertising in 2009. The basic gist of the story is that ads are going to be leaner and more focused this year. Less glitz and glam, more substance and appeal to customer desire for low cost and efficiency.

Specifically mentioned is that banner ads will be used less and less by big companies and therefore will lose legitimacy.

Banner ads will be the new junk mail. More and more, reputable companies won't be buying up the space around the Web sites you visit. Clicking these ads will become less and less legitimate as brands will endeavor to do things that add more value to you in the social-media and customer-service space.

—Colleen DeCourcy, chief digital officer at Omnicom's TBWA

Do you agree?

I think a lot of small artisan businesses rely on banner ads placed on blogs and alternative media websites to attract traffic. Additionally, many bloggers rely on ads placed by small businesses as a stream of income.

I admit, I do not have a lot of banner ads for my own jewelry. I've never found the right recipe to attract buyers - the investment never seems worth it for me. But others have great success.

Nor do I have any ads on my blog - I have enough 'stuff' on the side bar without worrying about ads.

What is the alternative to banner ads?

I personally LOVE Entrecard, which is a banner ad, but one that is interactive. I've discovered so many incredible blogs because of Entrecard and hopefully a few people have discovered me. But it is still a banner ad and requires someone to click on your 'ad'.

Another interesting tidbit is that RED will be the big color in advertising this year. Which I find funny because I didn't know there were "in" colors for advertising...apparently last year it was orange.

I love all shades of red so I use it a lot, but I'm not sure I'd want to see a lot of red in an advertisement.

More from the article...

"Video will increasingly show up on anything that doesn't move and even some things that do, on cellphones, buses, elevators, fast-food restaurants, billboards and, of course, the Internet."

"...Pricey, glitzy ad production will be rare..."

"...People will, amazingly, see more and more advertising they actually like and seek out. ..."

"...Out-of-home ads will increasingly be linked to use of cellphones and other Web-enabled mobile gadgets. ..."

Some of these scare me ... like new technology that can read the faces of people looking at digital ads? Creepy!

So how about you? Are you changing your advertising goals for this year? Online? Print? Something totally different?

Do you think that advertising affects your life as a consumer? I can tell you, since the stupid new chicken McNuggets commercials have been playing I have definitely craved those evil things.