An excellent interview at I Want Media with John Battelle, co-founding editor of Wired and founder of The Industry Standard, on traditional media, Google and Yahoo. This Q&A goes to the heart of Battelle’s message:
IWM: How is search technology impacting traditional media?
Battelle: Search has created a new attachment point for marketing. Marketers are used to the idea of attaching their messaging to content. For example, if you want to speak to women age 34 to 54, you need to buy your media and attach it to, say, “Oprah.” This is how magazines work, this is how television and radio work, this is how most Web sites work.
Search has created something that I call “intent attached marketing.” You’re not buying content attachment, you’re buying attachment to the intent as declared by a consumer. So if I’m interested in a Chrysler minivan, I go to Google and enter “Chrysler minivan. The sponsored link at the top of the search results page is Chrysler.com. And on the right-hand side are top Chrysler prices from CarPriceSecrets and CarMax, among other sites.
The point here is that I declare my intent into this engine, and the engine then organizes content for me. But the marketing is not attached to the content; the marketing is driven by the intent. It’s a shift in how marketing works. And it’s making publishers very nervous.
Hmmm…