Advertising 2.0 Mashup*

Went to the Mashup* on advertising 2.0 last night. It was pretty interesting, although nothing ground breaking. Dave Burrows, Yahoo’s head of Ad technology in Europe, gave a good talk on where we are and were we should be looking. It leaves me feeling better about advertising at work, because I actually trust Dave.

The main take away for me, aside from the assorted business cards, was that advertising has to be content. Maybe that’s comedy, maybe that is a widget that allows you to do something, but above all it’s something the user gets value from. As John Taysom put it, “No one wants advertising, and anyone that does can see me afterwards for a pill.”

While I’m slightly loathed to pimp work here, I really like what Sainsburys did with Yahoo! Answers. When they sponsored the Food category and asked some questions, they created a background to content without interrupting it. Everyone knows in the food category that they can buy their food from many supermarkets. The advertising helped create some content by asking questions, and it gave some bias to their product, but it didn’t interfere with the user experience, it became part of it.

When advertisers realise that the ads need to become small desirable products in themselves things might get better.