Perhaps the oldest form of web advertising is what we now refer to as “junk mail,” or “spam.” These direct email ads are so annoying that they’re literally referred to as junk. But, they’re cheap to produce, and free to send, and shockingly can still be effective if done right.
That’s why it’s kind of nice to see attempts like this one by Pmweb for Beach Park (a water park in Brazil) to do something interesting in this space. The email feels a bit like you’re going down a water slide; and, perhaps more important, it’s interesting enough that you’ll pay attention to it before just deleting it. That’s a success for direct email advertising.
A growing trend across the Internet is the use of crowd sourcing to generate content and solve problems across a wide range of areas. There’s even a local advertising agency called Victor & Spoils (victorsandspoils.com) that crowd sources every project.
The idea behind NowPublic (nowpublic.com) feels to me like a natural progression, but an exciting one. They’re a news site, but the news comes from regular people, like you or me. This, obviously, presents some problems. How can you guarantee that the news is accurate? Who is checking sources? Etc. It does have some backing, though, from organizations like TIME and The Guardian.
The more interesting twist to me is that there is no real outside influence. The people who own CNN or FOX can often have other agendas than just reporting the news. Theoretically, this is just the news. By the people. For the people.
Can’t wait to see how this whole thing plays out and if it catches enough steam to start appearing in main stream news Sites.
