Techonology (muhahaha)

“I never think about the future. It comes fast enough” -Albert Einstein

The advancement of technology has opened up a new arena in advertising, causing both a challenge and an opportunity to a company and their potential customers. Name both positive and negative impacts that web 2.0 technology and online progression has had on the brand industry?

Technology has a lot to offer, changing the way people interact, shop, spend, and consume. All of these things greatly matter to a company who is trying to best appeal to the way that people are living their lives, and the trends and shortcuts they are using to make them easier. The web has opened up an arena of opportunity, not only to the companies, but to the advertising sphere to send out messages in new places and reach an audience who is adapting to advanced communication platforms. Scott Bedbury mentions in his book A New Brand World why a shopping company, MySimon.com, was able to succeed and sell for over $700 million. “They recognized the value of technology, but they were most impressed by how quickly we had build such a creative brand.” (Pg 185)

The Internet and mobile technologies have made it easier to obtain information about the audience and website visitors, thus being more likely to enhance the value and traffic of a website and it’s products. We have seen this happen rapidly since the start of the millennium and continue to be the fastest growing advertisement platform of our generation.
The challenge that concerns both advertisers and consumers is the lack of certainty and future of web technology. The Internet boom took little to no time to become established and normalized in all American households and expanding worldwide. Bedbury quotes the capabilities this amazing new tool had and perhaps the downfall with the issue of consumer and producer transparency and trust. “Given its early developmental stage, the Web remains unpredictable and unreliable and will remain so for years.” (Pg. 187)

Just ten short years into the world wide web phenomenon, public opinion has geared towards the ‘overload’ of advertisements present on not only web pages but leaking into the television shows, personal videos, video games and much more. According to a 2008 Research Report done by Vizo research, in corporation with AdWeek, the largest percentage of surveyed consumers answered “Internet” to what drives them to avoid advertisements and which medium that deem the most invasive and irritating. (answers.vizu.com) This could become a destruction of the medium unless controlled and functioned at the consumers’ expense.