There is clearly a big movement underway to make advertising and marketing more content rich, as opposed to more sales-y, I imagine. Over at Top Rank Online Marketing Blog, they made a short blog post (CLICK HERE) about Aaron Goldman, author of “Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned from Google.”
In Aaron’s “Googley Lessons Blog Tour” (for TopRank), his message is to make ads that are valuable by making ads that “act like content.” In other words, “there’s value in the content and the ad,” and make “ads that are valuable, relevant content.”
I get a funny feeling when I hear these types of statements because it feels to me that they presume the marketer is trying to fool the viewers, that the marketer is being disingenuous. In other words, here’s the latest way to package your product message, almost like we’re trying to fool the viewer into subconscious submission. Of course I believe that the best kind of ads do educate, so maybe I’m being overly harsh inferring intent.