Monday 2 March 2009

At a Crossroads

We wrote about Advertising at a Crossroads nearly a year ago, today we read about Expedia's new PassportAds, the first program of its kind in travel advertising.

We wrote about Search At a Crossroads, and now TripAdvisor (actually another Expedia company) launches Integrated Search.

It's to be expected - the whole way we do business is shifting fundamentally. Like Philip C. Wolf, President and CEO, PhoCusWright Inc., says, it's a perfect storm:

“Each element in the search-shop-buy triumvirate is undergoing a period of intense innovation, making each increasingly significant, yet interdependent. In fact, searching, shopping and buying – once distinct terms describing different behaviors – are blurring at a furious pace”.

Our Bookable-Ads.com was launched late in 2008; it's almost old hat now and we wonder why it took so long. But the change is just beginning.

The most pervasive change is happening now and it's going to change the entire web and all that we do. Wolf was only half right; it's not about advertising and searching and buying only; equally important is the merging of publishing and communication with what we call the Social Web.

Social Web is just a new word for communications and networking. It started with teenagers, got noted by adults and is moving full steam into the mainstream.

Wolf should have added that publishing and conversation are merging, and that is going to throw the monkey wrench into the media!