dessalles

So there’s the widely accepted assumption that the future of online advertising lies in profile-based targeting. The thought being that people don’t hate advertising, they hate irrelevance. And maybe, just maybe, if enough information is gathered about an individual, a precisely targeted ad will transcend into some sort of enlightened state of personalized, peer recommendation – leaving behind the delusion of disruptive marketing

Well, we’re starting to catch glimpses of just how complicated advertising nirvana will be. Last week the New York Times ran a story about Google’s latest search result enhancement:

This month, the company introduced a search-within-search feature that lets users stay on Google to find pages on popular sites like those of The Washington Post,Wikipedia, The New York Times, Wal -Mart and others. The search box appears when someone enters the name of certain Web addresses or company names — say, “Best Buy” — rather than entering a request like “cellphones.”

So if users are going to be searching for content, no matter where, Serge and Larry would like they them to be using Google. Makes sense. But wait! continue reading »