All Marketers are Liars

On February 22, 2006, Seth Godin travelled to the Google campus and gave a talk about his book "All Marketers Are Liars." The bottom line in his talk was that delivering content and products to consumers when and where they want it will result in increased sales.

I think Godin really captured everything that marketing and advertising should be: a medium for consumers to find relevant products and services at the optimal time for them. If marketers focus on targeting to specific consumers, then advertising wouldn't be considered as invasive and companies would get a higher return on their investment. Targeting specific consumers through behavior will only benefit everyone because the focus of various media would not be on selling ads, it would be on producing superior content, there would be more jobs for researchers and technology experts to determine the best way to target consumers, there would be higher profit margins for marketers, and media would be able to charge more for space because of the highly relevant consumers and an increase in the return on investment.

The predicament with this situation is actually being able to target consumers based on behavior and purchasing habits outside of the internet and direct mail because of the lack of personalization in mass media advertising. Also, certain ways to track behavior and past purchases would be considered an invasion of privacy by many people. However, it would ultimately result in the best situation for all parties.

Personally, I am all for personalization and targeting in advertising, as a consumer and a future advertiser, which is exactly what web advertising is able to deliver. On a regular basis there are new developments and I hope to be able to deliver the latest news to you, so you can improve your ROI and avoid some of those irrelevant and therefore, annoying ads.