Is Internet Advertising dying? Great podcast, Dishy Mix with Bob Garfield

Yesterday during my run (only 2 miles), I listened to a recent Dishy Mix podcast with Bob Garfield.  Bob (links to his blog) made two points which really stuck with me; internet advertising is flawed and free is going to hurt the internet.

Bob made some great points about how internet advertising is a dying and that there are fundamental flaws that will keep internet advertising from prospering.  Bob stated "nobody will look at an ad if they have the option not to," which is spot on.  When people use the internet, they don't want interruptive ads and pop-ups, which is why the internet advertising industry has moved to banner ads.  Bob stated "nobody has ever clicked on a banner ad, ever, you know except for click fraud and mouse error."  With this in mind, won't the advertisers catch on when they measure their ROI from their banner ads and figure out the banners are not leading customers to purchase their product .  My thought is that advertisers aren't measuring and analyzing their internet advertising as well as they should.

Bob also talked about how giving services away for free on the internet goes against principle economics and is killing many businesses.  There were some early moves by companies to give away their services online for free while charging for offline services.  This has created a lot of free supply, and now customers are demanding products for free.  He talked about how Gen Y'ers have only known the 'free' world, and do not expect to pay for services.

Bob and Susan discussion created a lot of thoughts for me, I would definitely recommend this podcast to everyone and I look forward to reading Bob's new book The Chaos Scenario.

I'll follow this post up with some additional thoughts this podcast brought together for me.