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The future of advertising: Talking less and listening more

May 14, 2008 |

A new generation of brands, steeped in the interactive, responsive Web 2.0 model, are thriving without much advertising, because they rely on satisfied customers the evangelize on their behalf.

Not that advertising was, at first, even a consideration. For the latest wave of Internet services that came of age after the dot-com bust, spending money on marketing wasn’t in the game plan. These businesses, which saw how sites like Pets.com and Kozmo tanked fast and hard, typically ran far leaner operations. Instead, the paragon for online success was, and still is, Google, which has built one of the top brands in the world without advertising at all.

Yet Google obviously invests heavily in its brand. Its home page may have nothing but a search box and links to Google’s services—which means the company is forgoing tens of millions of dollars in advertising—but it’s doing something more important: putting its customers first. Untargeted ads, even simple text links, goes the rationale, would put too steep a cost on its users.

This decision is “revolutionary,” wrote Havas Media Lab director and London economist Umair Haque on Harvard Business Online in February. “By choosing to invest in consumers over advertising, Google is a living example of a deeper truth: The future of communications as advantage lies in talking less and listening more.”

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