AD-DARWINISM…
Darwinism explains the evolution of species on the planet earth. Ad-Darwinism, tries to explain the evolution of the advertising industry.
Advertising came into existence as early as in 5th–6th century BC in the form of Papyrus, Posters and Wall paintings. It was not until 16th-19th century, that the early advertising industry emerged with the emergence of printing press and automotives. Huge, attractive billboards became the centre of attraction for the outdoor audiences, while the print media amused the indoor audiences. The 20th century gave birth to the modern advertising industry, with the advertising agencies at the centre of it. Today, the advertising industry consists of many advertising agencies, operating within a country or internationally, still confined within themselves, just as the early humans used to stay in their own surrounding and interact within their own community. With internet, technology took a huge shift, and provided more advertising media than any other time in the history. By the early 21st century, Digital (Internet) Advertising has become the biggest of all the other fellow advertising media like TV, Radio, Print and Outdoor.
In the long process of evolution, a little change results in evolution. Sometimes, these evolutions fail as they lack certain elements necessary for the survival, sometimes these evolutions survive and result in further changes. Community building helped in better communication skill, which ultimately helped in building relationships that provided them with better resources. But as the early humans were confined to their own surrounding and then community, the present advertising industry has its own limitations with its own surrounding and community. Over the last couple of decades, technological advancement led the advertising industry to grow bigger, but the scale and power of the digital advertising media is such that it grew 10 and/or 20 times bigger than other advertising media. This gave tremendous opportunities for innovations in the digital advertising media but, still confined within the mobile and personal devices and experiences of audiences. Moreover, the web2.0 advertising strategies involves high amount of data collection, which is perceived negatively among the audiences.
All the businesses today follow Darwinism and evolve to adapt the changes. Digital advertising was the next step in the evolution of the advertising industry of the 20th century and before. The early 21st century showed us the power of digital advertising and the impact, it can create. The present digital advertising industry lacks the intermedia community interaction and is only confined to its own space. As modern humans have the genome of all other Homo species, digital advertising too needs to have the best traits of all the other media to become the Homo Sapiens of the advertising industry. Like outdoor advertising has one of the lowest CPM among all the other advertising media, for making outdoor obsolete, digital advertising media have to either offer the lowest CPM in the advertising industry (Replacement Theory) or use outdoor advertising within its infrastructure to provide a hybrid approach where digital and outdoor are connected together with one common CPM, providing better results (Interbreeding Theory). Not only this, if the other advertising media need to stay relevant in today’s world, they also need to embrace the changes and adapt themselves to stay relevant today.
So what is the next stage of the evolution in the advertising industry? Stay tuned for this new blog series from Vinciis, where we explore the possibilities of the advertising world and share our thoughts on it.
