Today i was having a conversation with someone regarding website design and attracting customers. Which made me take stock and realize that the internet and advertising is changing at such a rate that an advertising style a few years ago that was perfect wouldn’t work today at all. I think the largest change has been in the personalization of the internet that has been called web 2.0, which i’ve focused on seriously in a previous article. But to recap, the main idea behind it is that the company or individual converses on a personal level back to the visitor, sometimes in real time allowing a better sense of the client base to be realized. For example i believe a keystone of an internet advertising campaign is no longer just getting a high search ranking in google but having accounts and links spread across twitter, myspace and facebook enabling the user to interact in this web 2.0 way. For some companies this style of approach is still bleeding edge and it all depends on your demographic. For example a DJ or lighting and sound company caters to younger generations that are always attached to some piece of technology, for a company like that a few targeted ads on facebook and a twitter feed telling their “followers” about gigs there currently working on should be a corner stone of their web deployment advertising.

On the other end of the spectrum accounting companies would be looking to gain the edge still in the printed media form and maintain a static html website that simply provides there viewers with a place to find contact addresses and telephone numbers. The reason for this is simple, older generations stick to what they are comfortable and they are used to picking up a phone, organizing a meeting and heading in for a face to face meeting to discuss business. The current 90′s generation wants everything to be instant, they want to be able to gain infomation and act on within minutes, i know of some of my peers who have poor face to face communication skills but the moment they get in front of a computer they can talk faster than i think! The times are a changing.