^{Democracy & Technology Blog} The Coming Ad Revolution

Check out Taylor Frigon’s blog post, “A paradigm’s shift in the way you get information,” which links to a story in the Wall Street Journal by Esther Dyson entitled: “The Coming Ad Revolution.” Dyson’s column discusses major changes in advertising that have been on their way for years but which few people today even see coming. Frigon writes:

The article outlines an impending paradigm shift in the way people find information, which will have a tremendous impact on the advertising business and those that support it.
But this revolution in the way that people find information will impact more than just the ad industry. We wrote about some of the potential implications in the world of search two months ago in a post entitled, “What is the future of search?” And there are thousands of other ways in which the kinds of changes that Dyson is discussing in this article will impact business and life beyond business.
George Gilder predicted these very same revolutionary forces in his 2000 book Telecosm: How Infinite Bandwidth Will Revolutionize our World. In chapter 18, “The Lifespan Limit,” he wrote:
“The supreme time waster, though, is television. Many people still have trouble understanding how egregious a time consumer, how obsolete a business model, how atavistic a technology, and how debauched a cultural force it is. [. . .] For as much as seven hours a day, on average, consuming perhaps two thirds of your disposable time, year after year, all in order to grab your eyeballs for a few minutes of artfully crafted advertising images that you don’t want to see, of products that you will never buy.
“[. . .] In the future, no one will be able to tease or trick you into watching an ad. Your time is too precious and you are too powerful. Advertisements will truly add value rather than subtract it (247 – 252).”
The value of your trusted circle of friends, family, colleagues, and various networks to which you belong or with which you associate may become much easier to tap into to help you with decisions than ever before, diminishing the power of old-fashioned advertising as Gilder foresaw years ago and as Dyson describes in today’s article.
You may well make purchasing decisions based on these existing networks, as well as based on new networks which arise to provide you with access to what products other consumers like you find valuable.
Based on this outlook, the tremendous valuations for companies like Google, whose revenues are based upon a very primitive version of tying advertisements to what you are looking for, may be something of a house of cards. If the paradigm is truly shifting in the ways that are foreseen by Dyson and Gilder, there are new opportunities few see now, and the companies most dominant today may become examples for future discussions of the topple rate.