Amerika

As the ad revenues fall because people realize that a dot-com 3.0 collapse is coming because the advertising numbers are fake and the customers not buyers, the industry is waking up and taking notice of the grim fact that the internet industry is moribund and will soon fall as the markets devalue fake assets:

There’s a peculiar tone emanating from the social media space. It’s a little hard to hear, but if you listen closely, it’s there none the less. That sound is the sudden gasp of realization that the most dominating reasoning and defense that encompassed the entire social media space may in fact being laid-to-waste right before their screens. That horror?

The eyeballs for ads model doesn’t work.

…A 300% increase in readership didn’t mean squat to paying advertisers because – all they were getting was the bill for more “ad sales” and no sales. So they in-turn are now stating: Thanks, but no thanks.

The “ads for eyeballs” model reveals the core weakness of capitalism: it can be captured by commerce itself through the idea of consumerism, which is that it does not matter who the consumers are so long as there are enough of them. If a company needs 5% of the market to survive, under this theory, it needs only a certain number of warm bodies.

However, industry is discovering that not all warm bodies are the same. The ideal audience remains the American middle class, who shop carefully for good values and are loyal to brands. The new urban audience of beige people buying trendy products because of a media blitz is not working because their tastes are fickle and their loyalty non-existent. Companies will go to their graves for the mistake of choosing this audience.

In the meantime, the businesses that thrive are as always those who hit that sweet spot with the valued consumers, which means that who matters more than raw numbers. As in philosophy and politics, a wave of realization is hitting the West that “equality” is a denial of reality and will lead to our doom.

Tags: advertising, collapse, dot-com 3.0, dot-com bust, silicon valley, social media