Editor’s Corner:
Building Markets on Shaky Ground

These are exciting and tough times for marketers. In the last five years a whole new industry was spawned with the advent of the Web. New media is hot, new job titles are plentiful, IPO’s grab the headlines and profits are illusive in many over-valued companies.

Building markets on the Web has its changing demographics. First the web was populated by the techno-elite to today’s stay-at-home moms doing their grocery shopping online.

The research we cited in this issue predicts that as fast as the web built up to where it is today, it will change just as fast. And the convergence of the Web with TV will totally alter the landscape for information providers as well as recipients.

Multimedia presentations with streaming video and sound that are designed for PC-based viewers will reach smaller audiences than the markets TV and cable companies have amassed. Once TV and the Web really do converge we are heading toward a mass market, splintered and fragmented as all those channels may be, they still are massive.

Whatever we have created that works in the web now may hardly apply to viewer watching websites on a TV screen. Keyboards and mice may wither away for want of use while joy sticks and magic wands continue to service the couch potato world quite adaquately.

Perhaps it would be wise for web marketers to study how TV stations build up critical mass, advertising tactics they use to drive cyber-free eyeballs to the television screen. It’s time for marketers to broaden their focus because the venues their products are delivered on are certainly going in that direction.

Marketers are more like trail blazers today, constantly scooping our new turf, leaving only dust behind them.