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From pyramids to bird's nests
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New demands on the telecoms industry
Growing up Digital
See yourself in the news
Download, Adjust, Print!
Creative minds flourishing
A new era of advertising
Change and humility in politics
We still need handshakes
Ethical Business and Female Power
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Jeffrey Cole - A new era of advertising
Jeffrey Cole claims in Ericsson 2020 Shaping Ideas that in the near future, most digital content will be free. Who will pay for it? The advertisers will.
Extract from Jeffrey Cole on A new era of advertising
Jeffrey Cole: Jeffrey Cole
Jeffrey Cole: Every generation since the greeks have felt that things have never changed so fast. They've never witnessed such blinding innovation. The difference is this time it may be true. And we anticipate even more powerful changes in the next ten years up to 2020. To really understand how the Internet is gonna change our lives in the future, we can look briefly at what it's done to this point. The Internet, even though it's technically forty years old, for the way the most of us are using the Internet it's about fifteen. And the majority of the billion users around the world have been on less than that. And already what we've seen is transformation on a level never anticipated. What caught us off guard are the things we never could have anticipated. User generated content, that literally everyone of the billion and more people who are online could become publishers. To paraphrase Andy Warhol, Internet users don't care anymore about fifteen minutes of fame. What they're interested in is fifteen megabytes of fame. Jeffrey Cole thinks advertising is really essential in the support of digital content. There's only three ways to acquire content. You can steal it, and even those who steal it acknowledge that it's not a very good business model. You can pay fees or subscriptions or you can get it accompanied by advertising. And we believe that most digital content, at least in the next five to eight years, if it's going to survive, it's going to be through advertising. You know, one thing we've seen since the early days of television, is people talk about how much they don't like advertising. And yet when you ask them if they're willing to pay fees or subscriptions to avoid that advertising, they're not. So we really believe with all of the digital content that's out there, that people will prefer advertising to fees. And then when you add to that the ability of digital to target advertising. To know, within the constrains inappropriateness of privacy, a little bit about you. And to be able to direct the ads to you that are relevant. That are based on things that you're interested in, makes advertising potentially even more appealing. You can actually, literally direct, if there's four sets in the house and four different people watching it, a different add to each set in the house based on who's watching it. The most famous quote in the history of advertising, it's almost a cliche now, is the quote from John Wanamaker who said that We know half of our advertising budget is wasted. We just don't know which half. What target ability allows is for you to know which half. And to only target your adds, not to the half but to the five, ten or twenty percent who are really interested in what you have to say. I don't think everything is going to be free. Jeffrey Cole thinks a lot of things are going to be free with advertisers' support. But I think there's going to be some content that is so uniquely valuable that people will be willing to pay for it. And what we're looking at is what is that content? Highly proprietary financial information seems to be one thing people will pay for. Intelligence, information that's not available to the general public people will pay for. Lots of things will be free. Free is a good business model. But ultimately, I don't think everything is free.
Jeffrey Cole: Jeffrey Cole