Much has been written over the years about the unique qualities of the Internet, most of it by those of us who seek to sell Internet marketing and advertising services.  Self interests aside, what really distinguishes the Internet from other media is interactivity and the behavioral requirement to lean into the medium as we use it, a behavior much more akin to reading than to watching TV, a lean-back medium if ever there was one.

Of course the lean-in nature of the Internet has been challenged in recent years by the penetration of high-speed bandwidth – which is all about TV.  What was once an exclusively lean-in medium is now looking more and more like a lean-back medium with each passing day.  In effect, TV is changing the Internet far more profoundly than the Internet could ever change TV.  The problem for online advertisers, publishers and content producers alike is that the Internet compels us to lean in when all we really want is an excuse to lean back.

To complicate things further, not only do we want tuna that tastes good, we want it fast, right now!  Turns out, however, that our massive investment in a seamless user interface -- designed to move you and me at warp speeds from one virtual place to another -- is completely at odds with the most fundamental functions of good brand advertising to intervene and interrupt.  Turns out that after years of plummeting CTRs and CPMs the traditional lean-in model of targeted online advertising -- including search -- is utterly unscalable.

Think about it: we begin with advertising, a product no one wants (except those who produce, buy, sell and measure it) and everyone is equipped to avoid.  Then we take this product that no one wants and everyone is equipped to avoid and we make it available by design to smaller and smaller audiences across a medium that simply can’t and won’t tolerate it in the first place.  Then we double down when it doesn’t work.  Albert Einstein would call it insanity, but Lewis Carroll would be proud.

Again, our current obsession with targeting the audience is utterly unscalable and completely at odds with any attempt to sell the Internet as a branding medium -- because branding is a function of reach.  Too bad we long ago sacrificed the ability to reach the audience for the ability to target the audience.  In retrospect, it was a lousy deal, cut way back in the mid-1990s by young MBA-driven technologists who knew nothing about advertising and marketing, but needed something to sell en masse and a catchy copy point or two to help them sell it.

As a result, our effective audiences continue to shrink with each new layer of targeting technology, even as the total online audience grows in leaps and bounds.  Clearly, just because we can target a niche audience doesn’t mean we’ll reach the individuals in it, especially not when none of them want to be reached.  Meanwhile, our costs to reach niche audiences go way up while our effective ability to reach them goes way down.  We’ve now devolved to the point where the consumers we actually reach in any given niche audience are likely fewer than the number of self-professed marketing professionals trying to target them -- pretty much what Lewis Carroll had in mind when he sent Alice through the looking glass to a world where up is down and down is up.

Years ago I coined a phrase to define the phenomenon of paying more to get less; I called it DROI, Diminished Return on Investment.  The only way to give the DROI of online advertising the illusion of respectability is to continually lower expectations, and the only way to continually lower expectations is to continually lower the performance bar and redefine the metrics accordingly.  Stated otherwise, in order to discuss online ROI with a straight face we must first persuade ourselves and advertisers (with defensible research, of course) that paying more to reach fewer prospects is somehow a good thing.

Mission accomplished!  Unfortunately, the search for ad relevance in a lean-in medium is nothing less than a search for the Great White Whale.  First in the media food chain to take harpoons in the back are hapless publishers; it’s not for nothing that so many venerable, brand-name franchises now teeter on the brink of insolvency, despite more traffic than ever before.  Indeed, the more niche-targeted inventory they sell, the faster most of them go out of business.  McLuhan got it right when he suggested that any medium pushed to extreme will begin to operate in reverse.

The secret to branding success in a lean-in medium isn’t to find new ways to make advertising more relevant, because it’s not now and never has been.  Not in the least.  The secret to branding success in a lean-in medium is to offer more frequent excuses to lean back -- because that’s exactly what everyone wants, not only at the end of the day but throughout the entire day, every day.  Giving your prospects what they really want -- an excuse to lean back -- is truly scalable and promotes branding as a function of reach.  So don’t hunt, fish.  Don’t equip yourself with better ammo, look for better bait.  Don’t push, pull.  In an on-demand universe (and all commercial media are always on-demand) the only truly scalable model is one that caters to and exploits our constant need and desire to lean back.

I’d like to finish up by saying that getting people to lean back in a lean-in medium is a lot harder than it sounds – but it’s not.  In fact, it’s abysmally simple.  What’s hard is slowing down long enough to reduce the volume between our own ears.  What’s hard is letting go of failure to make room for meaningful change.  What’s hard is putting yourself and your company on the path to deliberate simplicity.  What’s hard is the journey back up the rabbit hole and back through the looking glass.

 

Jeff Einstein is one half of the Brothers Einstein, a contrarian brand strategy and communications boutique.  The Brothers Einstein will soon launch the Just BE Workshop, a one-day workshop designed to help senior marketing managers and executives lower the barriers to innovation and restore common sense to its rightful place atop the hierarchy of modern management tools.