Advertising

The Best Thing On The Internet Right Now

So after a particularly frustrating day of having Flash-based content crash my browser, I finally buckled under and succumbed to the recommendation of my old business partner Tim Smith and downloaded a little, free Mac Safari plugin called “ClickToFlash“.

ClickToFlash is a simple tool that blocks Flash content in the Safari browser and replaces it with a pleasant, ignorable graphic.  And if you choose to click the ignorable graphic – the Flash movie loads normally.  Simple.

But why would the average person want it?  Most advocates will tell you because it will significantly reduce browser crashing.  Which it does.  But there is something else.  Something I found infinitely more satisfying.

I’d resisted ClickToFlash previously because I thought, at the time, I wouldn’t want to miss out on all those cool experiences, those grey boxes would probably annoy me, and any extra clicking would degrade my experience.

Was I ever wrong on all counts.

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The Myth of Viral Marketing And The Rise Of Status

“Viral Marketing” is a myth. Always has been. It never existed. And as you’ll see, even if it had, you would want nothing to do with it. “Word of Mouth”? Less toxic, but critically, equally incomplete. Social Network Marketing? Swarm Marketing? Mobile Marketing? Just more opaque containers. In a revealing display of the industry’s ongoing struggle with interactive, none of the terms in use today comes close to illuminating how an advertiser can approach inspiring that Holy Grail of interactive marketing, a User-distributive spread…  Until now.

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HP PONG: Advertising’s Atom Smasher

In 1996, at Red Sky Interactive, in partnership with a rebellious band of talented individuals, I developed the HP PONG Banner Ad: the first interactive banner ad on the net, and the web’s first example of “rich media”.  But behind the scenes, that banner was an atom-smasher, revealing the very principles of interactive advertising- and sweeping industry changes yet to come.    

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