With Teeth: the death of display ads – and what we can do about it

I’ve had a couple of very interesting discussions recently regarding advertising in general, but also with specific reference to music websites. The suggestion from some site owners is that the income generated by display ads is in decline, and this raises the question of how exactly they are to survive in years to come if this trend continues. The problem lies within the display advertising networks and the fact that the banner ad is now on its last legs as a medium to effectively promote your product to people. But what are the alternatives? Bizarrely it would seem (to me anyway) that only one company of late – Buzzfeed – has genuinely addressed the advertising problem with a solution that actually seems to work for both the advertisers and the website carrying the content. If you’ve not already I would strongly recommend reading their CEO Jonah Peretti’s strategy document which outlines their approach perfectly and gives a huge amount of insight into an advertising model that could actually work in the future. So what is their solution? Quite simply it is to create content in collaboration with the advertisers that Buzzfeed feels will appropriately draw interest from their viewing audience. [...]