What kinds of products and services catches your attention when you're surfing the Internet?
Chances are, it's not going to be email offers, banners ads or pop-up ads but rather product information contained within articles that's going to translate into action.
At least, that's the conclusion of research performed by ARAnet with polling done by the Opinion Research Corporation (see 'Brand mentions preferred over Ads' by eMarketer).
Online articles that include information about brands stood out at 51% (selection by respondents), with email offers coming in at 47%. Sponsored search engine links stands at 39% while banner ads and pop-up ads stand at 25% and 13% respectively.
A key finding of the study is that younger audiences tend to respond more favorably towards product information that comes in the form of articles and write ups. Between 50-60% of those aged between 18-34 were either somewhat likely, or very likely, to take action after reading online articles with brand information.
Pop-up ads, on the other hand, ranked very poorly in terms of their call-to-action, with 87% of participants indicating that they were not like to respond to them.
You may be interested in the rest of the demographic data that is presented in the eMarketer article, but one thing that's clear from this report is the increasing importance of content or knowledge leadership as a form of strategic communication on the Internet today.
As I've argued previously, one's credibility as communication professionals will depend on how much people see them as knowledge or content leaders – whatever the organizations may be specializing in. Regardless of one's communication platform, the aim is to become a trusted and sought-after knowledge resource for the community (Solis and Breakenridge, 2009, p.18).
The ARAnet study goes some way to reinforce that, but therein also lies the paralleled danger of quick-thinking marketers who increasingly seek to disguise their ads as content.
If this becomes a mainstream practice (and I'm sure it will, given that economics and what sells will ultimately drive commercial practices), then the expected consequence and impact in due time is that people will switch off with content as well. This may well be a smoldering crisis in the making for the PR 2.0 industry to seriously contemplate today!
PR practitioners better start thinking of ways to counter this impending 'misinformation' propaganda soon, or there will be a day when even good and credible content will be bypassed along with the spam and informational flotsam!
Maybe this is why Mark Drapeau argues passionately against brands being on Twitter (see the Mashable article 'Do Brands Belong on Twitter?') because, apart from the argument about whether it is brands or people that are communicating on the platform, the long term effect is a cluttering of the statusphere as well as the desensitization of people's awareness between what constitutes brands and what constitutes genuine attempts by others to share information and content.
I don't have clear solutions right now, other than to sound this matter out. But I'd certainly be interested to know what you think.