Old Ideas Fail in an Online World
I recently read Dana Blankenhorn’s great article about the future of eBooks. Dana argues that eBooks in their current form are not taking advantage of being a digital product because they fail to leverage the power of hyperlinks. I would completely agree. Furthermore, it has been proven time and time again that repurposing old ideas from the offline world doesn’t translate into success in the online world. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples, banner ads and SecondLife.
Banner ads on a website are conceptually easy to understand for marketers who are used to working in an offline world. Essentially banner ads are digital equivalents of newspaper or magazine ads. These types of ads fail to tap in to what makes the web a powerful tool. In this case, the ability to dynamically change based on user behavior and the ability for business owners to easily create their own ad content.
In contrast, text based ads such as Google AdWords harness the unique powers of the web by changing based on what a user searches for on Google. Other benefits include the marketplace Google has created around the purchasing of AdWords and the fact that any small business owner can easily create their own. This DYI aspect of AdWords are another uniquely digital idea that empowers end users to create their own content without expert intervention. Text based ads such as AdWords consistently outperform banner ads because they are based on digital ideas that succeed in the digital environment.
The ways which companies flocked to the virtual world SecondLife provides another example of how old ideas repurposed for the virtual-world fail. In the article “How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life“, Frank Rose describes how companies are spending millions of dollars to set up a virtual presence in SecondLife. The problem is these virtual corporate headquarters sit empty, generating little or no ROI. So why are companies wasting millions on this? Rose points out that these companies are falling into the trap of repurposing old real-world ideas for the online world. To them, it makes sense to have a virtual company headquarters because they have a real-world company headquarters. SecondLife itself makes these bad ideas even more attractive because it looks like the real world—virtual people walking around virtual environments.
I feel that if eBooks never offer anything more than being a digital copy of a real-world product they will never be widely adopted. Ideas and products that are uniquely digital are the ones that will find the most success online. Currently eBooks aren’t there yet.
Tags: AdWords, Google, Innovation, SecondLife, Web 2.0