Andrew Frank

Let’s take a moment to appreciate the prescience of futurist Alvin Toffler, who coined the phrase “information overload” in the late 1960s. While some predictions, like human cloning and genetic architecture, are still way out there, IO is arguably the defining quality of our current culture.

The most recent exhibit comes from Google, which just announced real-time search, that promises to “bring your search results to life with a dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web.”

“Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before. When they are relevant, we’ll rank these latest results to show the freshest information right on the search results page.”

Microsoft’s Bing already integrates real-time Twitter and Facebook results, although, unlike Google, has yet to integrate them directly into the main search results pages. And, in a clue to the economics behind all of this, Yahoo! has also introduced Ad Interest Manager, a tool that allows Yahoo! users to “assert even greater control over their online experience” by selecting categories of interest to be used in targeting ads.

Tempting as it is, I’ll refrain from launching into a diatribe about the deleterious social effects of our growing addiction to (the illusion of) “instant knowledge” delivered in a stream of constant interruptions – if you’re in the mood for this sort of thing, I enjoyed Simon Dumenco’s nice little summary on AdAge. Instead, I’ll just try to make a point about the economic trends that underpin this immediacy arms race and the implications for technology and marketing.

The point is this: search as we’ve known it has been pretty much a context-free, anonymous experience and, while this has created some relevancy issues, these were tolerable in exchange for the convenience and security that anonymity provides. As we get hooked on the firehose of real-time and take it mobile, this trade-off starts to fail, and relevancy filtering becomes a necessity. So search will increasingly need to be personalized. This in turn will increase its efficacy to advertisers, widening the gap between search engines and untargeted media.

This escalation doesn’t just apply to consumers. Advertisers and publishers, who also need to chase relevancy, will increasingly be dependent real-time data to recognize patterns and trends that they need to address. The challenge will be to build systems and organizations that are capable of processing the accelerated pace of information with the stability of a long-term brand.

The contrarian view on real-time is that it will lead, in time, to a widespread craving for a return to some form of permanence and pacing in our relationships. In marketing, this translates into a resurgence of thoughtful branding over targeted promotion. On the other hand, it’s always important not confuse a clear view with a short distance, so for now, it’s time to tune in, open the information flood-gates, and get your tweets to those in-market consumers.

2 Comments »

Category: Uncategorized     Tags:

Share