McKenzie Wark on Mon, 3 Mar 97 08:14 MET |
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nettime: yank, tug, and socko media |
Funny thing about 'push media'. I don't read Wired all that often any more. My sub lapsed. I just get it on the newsstand sometimes now. That 'push media' cover really got my attention. I picked it up, looked at it, read the cover lines -- and put it right back. It might be worth linking up Geerts very stimulating remarks with an earlier story in Wired that i recall, on web sites and advertising. It was clearly aimed at 'educating' the buyers at ad agencies and their clients. The line was that stand alone 'product palace' web sites for your company might look great when you show them to the board of directors, but just count the hits -- both of them. Or if you do start getting users, look at how they're using you. The example given was a site for a lingerie company that had a discussion group going on among men who love to cross dress. Not that there's anything wrong with that (as Jerry Seinfeld says) but it probably wasn't selling too much lingerie. What this particular story in Wired was talking up as the alternative was the strip banner ad placed in editorial that's independently produced. The counter argument it tried to rebutt is that these get very few click-thoughs. Search engines thought they were on to a good thing -- they get *lots* of hits. So they were in a strong position to sell banner ad space. But if you're searching, you're looking for something, you're not likely to be too easily distractedby a lousy banner -- particularly given how ugly and unimaginative they are. Not to mention how damn long it will take to load the page if you do click on it, with all its whistles and aplets. Now, i must say, i had some sympathy with the wired position on this. If its a choice between sites owned and produced by companies selling crap via 'advertorial', or commerical information providers independent of their sponsors but selling strip ads, I hope there's always room for the latter. We cross a new threshhold within modernity when the content *becomes part of* the advertising. Unfortunately, the upshot of all this is that neither click thru banner ads nor web sites dedicated to a particular product or company really seem to be earning their keep. And so, back to the future! Push media, etc. It reminds me of the early days of TV and radio in the US (where the commerical model was always the main event). But it also makes me wonder about what's changed. I think about all those 'infomercial' shows on TV. You can watch *hours* of this shit, all of which does nothing but sell exercise machines, or whatever. Or take the current model of the spectacle perfected: home shopping. Integrate not only advertising and entertainment, but point-of-sale as well. I don't want to sound too depressing about this, but i think its a problem if even Wired is finding it hard to pitch for a place in the media market. After all, there's not a hell of a lot of difference between Wired and the advertorial model anyway. If you can't sell *that* in adland, what the hell can you sell? And let's remember that while Wired has 'content', it is an entirely self-referential content. A mix of media that talk endlessly about themselves as a mix of media. At the Data Conflicts conference in Potsdam that Tom Keenan and Tom Levin organised, Michael Linder talked about trying to get money for web current affairs. Whatever one thinks of his Bezerkistan site and all that, i think he raised an interesting issue. News media cost money. That money has to come from sponsorship one way or another. That sponsorship really isn't all that interested in advertising in web sites about Bosnia, when that money is, according to current groupthink, better spent on advertorial. You could of course look for a major media backer for your independent current affairs or news web site, but just try it. You're dealing with the same people who monopolise TV, plus Microsoft. If i was to try and put an optimistic spin on this, i'd say that so called push media are likely to appeal to differnt kinds of user to the 'library' of the web, or the same users at different times in their media using cycle. In other words, you get something like the adjustment that happened to newspapers after radio then TV came along. Smart ones found a way to feed off the particular desires for information the new media created. Dumb ones went head to head and lost. That cycle may now be compressed into a rather more rapid progression. But just as advertising presently tends to look for a spread across several media, so it may be in a world of push-and-pull online media. There are whole, uh, libraries of theories about how to combine advertising in different media. I just read -- in the New York Times -- that Rupert Murdoch wants to go the Sky/Star TV route in the US. Beam satellite down from 'pon high and give the cable guys a run for their money. The Napolean of the comsat is at it again. I mention this because i have a general feeling these are times of increased cometetiion *between* media, something we haven't experienced in the modern world for over 40 years. The trick for those of us in the information producing class (as opposed to the information owning class) is to be able to apply skills across a number of possible media alternatives, so we don't go the way of the hand weavers. And at the same time, find the gaps and cracks within which to reproduce the discourse about our own interests, to the extent that they are distinct and sometimes opposed to those of the information owners. McKenzie Wark netletter #10 3rd March 1997 ______________________________________ McKenzie Wark http://www.mcs.mq.edu.au/~mwark Visiting Professor, American Studies Program, New York University "We no longer have origins we have terminals" -- * distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission * <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, * collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets * more info: majordomo@is.in-berlin.de and "info nettime" in the msg body * URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@is.in-berlin.de