Not new news that advertising a new megaphone or broadcast model will die soon. Targeted advertisements have long existed and are just as sophisticated as those provided by Google and Facebook. The internet introduces us to a new term which is the impact of the increasingly massive production and distribution of information: Information Economy (information economy). But this article is not about targeted advertising that we are familiar with. For advertisers, the information economy is a new problem. Not only is it like a flood and is distributed to various media, but the size of the information makes attention more difficult to win. Without getting attention, there’s no point in advertising. We can pay other people (advertising media) to distribute information, even to the most strategic places and times. But attention cannot be bought. Attention is a very limited resource and occurs in zero-sum games: when one gets attention, another loses. Because one attention can only be devoted at one time. When you read my writing, I managed to get your attention. But are you currently thinking of a brand of toothpaste? I’m sure not. I won, toothpaste lost. Those who are familiar with digital advertising (digital advertising) must feel it. No ad network platform in the world puts a price on attention as a commodity unit. On Google or Facebook Ad, we can pay some money so that our ads are distributed to several people at one time. But we can’t pay Google / Facebook so the audience clicks or takes action after seeing the ad. That’s what we need (call to action, CTA).
ECONOMY ATTENTION
Long before the internet ruled the world, economist Herbert A Simon in 1971 had a prediction. He said, “In a world of information floods, large amounts of information mean death for others: scarcity caused by whatever is captured by information. What is captured by information is very clear: it seizes the attention of the recipient. Therefore, the flood of information causes scarcity of attention, and the need to allocate attention efficiently among abundant information.
For brand owners, the world today is increasingly frustrating. They not only have to compete with competitors to get attention. Because now everyone is a star. All individuals have their brands and also want to get attention. Brands must compete with each of these individuals. Imagine, a picture of a cute cat shared by a social media user who knows who can get tens of millions of people’s attention in no time. For brands, this massive attention should belong to them, or at least be able to get similar attention. In fact no. Zero-sum game: the brand loses, the cat wins.
There are more and more wretched. In the world of hyper-trusted endorsements, people increasingly trust peers in their networks, not brands. Broadcast awareness pursued by the brand becomes limited within the scope of the endorsement. Thus, when everyone unites in a platform where they can share information, consumers control the brand, not the other way around. Brands increasingly lose control of awareness, attention, and action. The control moves to a peer network that is in a loose relationship.
CLAIMING THE HOLY GRAIL WORLD ADVERTISING
Social media and search engines initially became platforms that advertisers could only dream of as a space that would allow large-scale brand advocacy to take place. Word of mouth immediately changes to the world of mouth in the peer network ecosystem. The hyper-trusted endorsement is no longer a fantasy. Information can be viral in an instant in social medicine because it interacts massively, or ranks highest in search engines because of the large number of clicks. Coupled with the sophistication of machine learning platforms that can filter information (filtering) so that it remains relevant to individuals. It said Mark Zuckerberg, a network recommendation.
IMPROVE THE FUTURE
From the above, we can conclude there are big problems in the advertising world today: the scarcity of attention and the recommendation system. To answer this, we can put our future hopes on the Internet of Things (IoT) and augmented reality (AR). Both allow attention to be sold as a commodity, isolate, exploit the moment of truth, and strengthen the sales funnel to the final stage through a single platform. Machine to machine communication will be more massive and implemented on many devices. Ranging from household devices, wearable devices, to vehicles. Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) will continue to grow and increasingly understand human behavior, and are ready to help us do many things. That’s when the world of advertising will change revolutionarily. It may be that we will no longer see advertisements because they are infiltrated in very persuasive and hidden ways.