 |
 |
 |
|
re: Instead of throwing messages at them
There is a need for vendors to tell us about what they have to offer, and we need to know what vendors have to offer, on the chance they have something we need/want. Please hang with me through this analogy. A new Indian restaurant opens. Rashid, the owner, needs to let people know that he is open for business and what he has to offer, so he distributes flyers with his menu all over town. For very few people, the flyer will be welcome information. For most people, the flyer will just be more advertising crap. Rashid has imposed a cost on everybody to benefit very few. In economic terms, this is a classic externality. An advertising message carries risk -- risk that the message will be meaningless (and valueless) to the recipient. Vendors pay for that risk in wasted advertising expenditure, and we all pay for that risk in clutter, litter, noise, crap in our environment (especially our media environment). At MyMindshare, I am creating a mechanism for reducing risk. First, the risk of a meaningless message is mitigated by the fact that the vendor is paying the recipient for delivery (this is the bid for mindshare). Second, the risk is reduced by enabling users to express their interests, and enabling vendors to target their message to those interests. This is simply a better way to do advertising, and the only way that can survive the predicted implosion.
|
