TiVOing the Web

// March 4th, 2009 // Blog

Once upon a time, people watched TV commercials. Then came TiVO and the DVR. Now everyone fast-forwards past them. No wonder advertisers are shifting so much of their TV budget to online efforts. But, what if all the money and effort they put into creating a fancy banner campaign was negated by a “browser bookmarklet” that lets users eliminate all advertising?
What if users could choose a “reading view” of a web page that makes all of “the noise” disappear? Now they can, thanks to a browser bookmarklet called Readability. Brought to us by the fine folks at lab.arc90, Readability works with most major modern browsers and has been tested on many news sites and blogs. It isn’t 100% effective but works surprisingly well. See above for a before and after demonstration.
Advertisers take note: if you really want to reach your customers, this is the time to to stop talking at them and start talking with them. If you don’t have a long-term social media marketing strategy to engage your customers in an ongoing dialog, there’s a good chance that no matter how important your message, it may never get “read”.

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