The internet has made a commodity out of us all, with the that wonderfully hateful word “advertising” lurking around every corner, skittering into every picture, resource or spare square inch and screaming for your attention. The internet is nothing more than another platform to advertise on, and the product, in most cases, is you.
For example.
The Jabberwocky phone gets a call inviting us to purchase advertising space. The website in question has 14,000,000 unique visitors a month, all of whom would be exposed to our advertising until they submit and click on the link. That’s you, right there, being a product as you browse. You don’t get paid for it, because the website has already paid someone else to optimise their site so that you would want to come there in the first place. You have not fallen for a ploy or been duped, because chances are you genuinely want to be there and will find what you are looking for, but you are what we, as advertising customer, would be paying for. The exciting website and its equally excited sales rep go on to tell us that this exclusive offer is simply not to be missed, and that unless you buy this advertising space on this website NOW the world will probably turn on us fire-and-brimstone-style.
Barny then politely explains that if we had spare funds we wouldn’t spend it on that, and they usually eventually give up.
I imagine advertising must work, even if I don’t click on it much. When Google gave us £70 of Adwords credit people clicked through to us and had a look around, so somebody uses it. I think my problem is that advertising is taking the sportsmanship out of the whole business. There is no question of us both putting our product on the table, shaking hands and letting the best man/woman/Warwickshire-based-caterer win, instead the winner will be the one who can plough most cash into advertising.
Those are the rules of course, so the Jabberwocky will need to play by them too. Let’s face it, this website is entirely advertising, from the beautifully designed logo right through to the prose you are reading now. They are there to sell you the product on some level, because without the product, they wouldn’t be there.
Having established that I am the thing I find most dislikeable about the internet puts me in an uncomfortable position, because realistically I should remove myself from the loop and thus make the internet a better place. The Beast would rust into a little heap and I would have to find somewhere else to rant about feedback. My one saving grace is that the evil leviathan of Advertising is subdivided into many different subspecies, and not all of them deserve suffering and the withholding of kittens and tea.
While I admit that the blog is attached to the business, and therefore must be regarded as a form of advertising, my prime goal is to tell a story. I would argue that in that sense the blog is advertising in the same way that a book is an advert for the sequel. I’m not going to tell you you have to try it, I just hope it will be interesting enough for you to want more some time.
I love your writing! I have been reading your blog for several hours over the last day, and must say I have been entertained the entire time.