Greatest Threat to the Ad Business

The following is excerpted from Jack Myers new best-selling book Hooked Up: A New Generation's Surprising Take on Sex, Politics and Saving the World. The book focuses on "Internet Pioneers" – also called the Hooked Up Generation -- born 1991-1995. They are the firstgeneration of college students to grow up with the Internet and the first to cross the chasm from the pre to the post-Internet Age. The following is excerpted from Chapter 23: Marketing and Internet Pioneers. For more information visit www.hookedupgen.com and visit www.amazon.com for more excerpts and the full table of contents

The Future: Internet Pioneers as Marketers

The single greatest threat to the traditional advertising business will be a failure to attract Internet Pioneers into the ad business. The advertising and marketing business needs a radical overhaul, and Internet Pioneers can provide the necessary leadership. Internet Pioneers will be the first generation to enter the media and advertising businesses with the Internet in their DNA, and with an inherent understanding of how to reach consumers and communicate effectively via online, mobile and socially connected programs.

Over the next two decades, new innovative tactics that truly exploit the potential of the Internet will evolve as Internet Pioneers gain control over the marketing of major corporations, ad agencies and media companies. These tactics will move the ad business in a different direction. They will focus on creative strategies tuned to online and mobile communications and Internet-based technologies rather than strategies designed for traditional media and especially for mass television.

It's a direction that will be more social and interactive, more engaging, more emotional, and more focused on building connections between the advertising messages and the content environment in which they appear. Marketing campaigns will depend on data and databases to target the right messages to the most receptive and potentially responsive audiences.

Advertising will travel from friend to friend as a part of recommendation engines, and advertising will be organized, curated and shared in the same way YouTube videos are today. TED.com has created the "Ads Worth Spreading" global initiative to identify and distribute messages that the curators at TED believe are worthy of attention for their creativity, message, relevance, controversy, etc.

Advertising will have direct commerce options embedded and activated instantly or when the consumer appears at a point of sale where the offer can be redeemed. Advertising will translate smoothly across multiple communications platforms. Advertising will become more global as marketers recognize the potential of Internet communications, yet it will also serve consumers where they live, shop and travel. New digital strategies will displace local pennysavers and Val-Pak coupon mailers. Local blog sites that serve their communities will expand and consolidate. These sites and apps will eventually dominate the market for consumer access to local information, services, merchant and restaurant recommendations and special offers.

As marketers begin to focus more on the Internet Native audiences and hire Internet Pioneers to manage advertising and marketing programs, completely new and unimagined relationships between marketers and consumers will evolve, altering the fundamental nature of advertising and communications.

Read more about the Hooked Up Generation atwww.hookedupgen.comand buy the book atwww.amazon.com