Another counter argument: When you target earlier in the funnel, you're less sure of winning that user.<p>Example: you buy a banner ad promoting a digital camera. The user sees it, and decides it's time to buy one. Now he does research, and ends up buying a competitor. While you were successful in creating demand, you ended up sending a customer to a competitor.<p>That is why display ads are worth less - you aren't guaranteed to extract the value they create.
This is why Amazon is great. When people from the internetz click through to Amazon, they get all the reviews/research they need. They are also presented with other great items they didn't even intend to buy. So that means profit for content creators. But I think the biggest winners are deal sites like slickdeals.
This is very interesting. I have always viewed content sites (especially blogs) as a sort of parasite. Here's the manufacturer/seller that is trying to sell me something that I want and in the way there are numerous blogs that take away the seller's money onto advertising, therefore raising my cost. This of course only applies to the sites I don't read. There are legitimate ones, ones that do the research, publish their results, etc. Edmunds.com falls under this category.<p>On the other hand, there is a metric ton of travel sites and it's just a huge waste of my time. Every time I want to travel I have to check 5-6 sites to see if I'm getting a good deal or not. Why can't I go to the source and get data directly from the airlines?
If brand advertising on content sites is under valued, isn't that a big opportunity for brands to buy valuable ad space on the cheap? The author doesn't explain why the market is wrong (I'm of course skeptical, because markets aren't wrong very often).
My counter argument:<p>Since the beggining of time consumers have undergone the same process when making a buying decision.<p>In the past you might drive to the convenient local Circuit City to check out a TV you read in consumer reports was quality, and then order the thing from Sears catalog because you were discount shopping.<p>I agree that it's a shame we can't all split a few pennies of advertising dollars on the research side, but I look at the REAL opportunity here as helping people create BETTER websites & CRM to shorten the sales cycle and capture those dollars for themselves.