Very few companies understand that if we cannot solve the digital content consumption paradox, our industry will be in for a world of hurt. The reason? The more we go to support all of this with advertising, the more vulnerable we all in this industry are. Why?
When money gets tight, when companies are hurting, we all know the first place many of them go to solve their problem… slashing the ad budget. That is because in the corporate economy of publicly traded companies, being a slave to the quarterly stock price often takes precedence over long-term company goals. We are witnessing that right now. Fortunately, we have two things working in our favor this time. One, our industry is fundamentally measurable, and a bit more proven this downturn. And accountants love measurable; so hopefully the offline world will take the brunt of the hit. The other thing that may save us in 2008 is that it is an election year, and election money has an expiration date.
It's not just limited to the internet world, it extends to all things digital. Look at what we've done with the cell carriers. They are all trying to lock people into exclusive value-add offerings that, guess what, no one is buying. Does any major call carrier have the balls to just open up its network and allow us to run the apps we want? GPS? RFID payment systems? Open API's? Why in the most technologically advanced nation in the world -- the one that created the internet economy -- do we not have 3G phone access? Why can we not pay for vending machines, subway tickets or movie tickets with our cellphones via a simple text or a wave of the phone. Oh that's right, now we've looped in our financial industry and the consortium of Visa, Mastercard and American Express. Maybe Visa's now being public will start to break the mold, but American Express has been a public company for years. Why is it not partnering with a major cell-carrier or, even better, making an open standard for payment so that we can ALL use it?
Because when you get right down to it, it's not about the consumer's choice, or even all consumers. What companies care about is their consumer, and how to balance their satisfaction as it relates to profit. In fact, it is more a strategy of preventing attrition to other carriers, companies or sites than it is about true customer satisfaction.
Who do consumers think they are? They think that we're all trying to take advantage of them, lock them in, control them and then maximize our profit from them while managing their discontent. And you know what? They're right. No wonder they're stealing from us.
Sean X Cummings is director of marketing for Ask.com.