Photo: Arturo de Albornoz

Photo: Arturo de Albornoz

There’s been lots of talk about the “death of advertising” and the increasing ineffectiveness of the media. There’s a tremendously well-researched, insightful and informative Bob Garfield post in Ad Age, with lots and lots of numbers supporting his version of “Apocalypse Now” for the ad industry. There’s no doubt that there’s agency layoffs, and client cutbacks and fear and uncertainty. So who am I to be the bearer of even an ounce of good news for the ad industry?

Okay, I won’t tell you this is good news. But I will tell you what I think is fascinating.

Throughout history, for every version of media, there has been an ad unit that is a miniature version of that very media. Advertising usually- in some form- mirrors the content of the media that surrounds it.

Ads in newspapers, for example, are rectangular shaped boxes that includes a “headline” and “copy”. Even the terminology is straight out of newspaper jargon. Pretty obvious, right? Television? The medium is 30 minute stories involving actors on a set. What are most TV commercials? 30 second stories involving actors on a set. With a little music thrown in, just like in the big boy shows. Radio? Started with dramas. The term ’soap opera’ was coined because soap manufacturers sponsored radio dramas in return for product plugs. Radio commercials thus become mini-dramas”; still at their best when they are theater of the mind for a brand story.

And then along came the Internet. Ahh, the Internet. I actually remember the day I first heard the term used. My friend Martha called me into her office. Told me I’d better sit down. Shut the door. My palms grew sweaty. She said, “Lisa, have you seen this thing called the Internet?” She called up a paragraph of html text on a screen. It was filled with hyperlinks and Martha showed me how to “click through” to layers of information. It was years later before the term “click-through” became ubiquitous for banner advertising ROI. But at the time I was in her office, there wasn’t a banner ad in sight.

So now we have a brave new medium – Social Media. And we’re all scratching our head, wondering what the ad unit is.

Do we stick little banner ads on social sites? Oh, please. Have you ever seen a TV “commercial” that is nothing more than a static photo and a logo? Trust me, it doesn’t work. Stick banner ads on social sites and you ruin both the media and the ROI. Best case scenario, the ads become invisible. Worst case, people run screaming from the media.

But then, what does an ad look like in social media? Is it merely conversations? Does all advertising become word of mouth among friends as Jeff Jarvis and others suggest?

Or…is the “ad” really a social ecosystem itself that a company sets up? The conversations with consumers that are now public combined with a fan page on Facebook and the photos on Flckr and the idea-sharing on Twitter and the YouTube videos. And is a new ad, perhaps, the way that the target audience shares content about a brand or company across complex and interrelated networks? A “display” ad is now a conversation that gets displayed in a public forum. Remember, just because you’re not screaming “buy this” with a sledgehammer doesn’t mean you’re not selling something. You’re selling the brand by engaging consumers across multiple touchpoints, just like the social web itself. It’s the online experience that engages the consumer and captures their imagination much the same way that television captured our collective imaginations back in its glory days.

Is the newest ad unit staring us in the face but we just don’t see it? Is it just a miniature version of the social web, the same way that past ad units were miniature versions of their own mediums?

Are we just afraid to call Social Media itself “Advertising” because we hold it so precious?

And for those who would argue that advertising is paid messaging, remember this. Social Media, or this new order of Social Advertising, or however we describe it, may appear to be free, but there is a cost to it all. There’s the time spent to do it right, to have individuals who actually hold conversations with the consumers. There’s the challenge of understanding how the brand story should be told across all the hundreds of touchpoints scattered across the web. There’s learning the new rules of etiquette – heck, there’s helping to *create* the new rules of etiquette. There’s building the network, or leveraging existing ones, and getting the people engaged in a way that’s genuine and authentic, and that comes from the very core of a brands values or a products benefits. And there’s a cost to understanding the potential of this medium, the cost to experiment, to make mistakes.

But on the flip side, the ROI could very well be survival for those who do it well and do it now. Get it right, and I truly believe you can re-invent a dying industry.

The best advertising has always been that which has captured the imagination of the public and becomes a part of the collective consciousness. What better time than now, what better media to do it with. Maybe advertising isn’t really dead at all. Maybe we simply don’t know what to call it.

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This post first appeared on Damien Basile’s blog: The Cause Is The Habit