new media man

Why Do Traditional Advertising Formats Fail on the Web?

Karp seems like he is shilling for Google (only successful online advertising company?), either that or he is complete neophyte to the online advertising world.

Search marketing is an (admittedly) incredible/effective but it is only part (limited due to searches available) of the media mix that needs to take in account additive effect of offline+ other online graphical display advertising. Kudos to Google for dominating this space but the online ad market is really in its infancy, where focus was on Direct response. But the future battle is for the huge ad budgets that sit on the branding side and this is up for grabs as i don't believe most marketing people are convinced that search marketing is the solution to address their issues.

Additionally with display advertising there is another level of engagement that is lacking in the offline world. To say that it does not work, how do you explain the large display advertising businesses of MSN, Yahoo!, AOL as well as large publishers in other markets around the world like Mail.ru in Russia, T-Online in Germany etc. and all the of fortune 500 type companies spending money there (beyond search and note: now Google is trying to move to Display world too via Doubleclick)? The argument for online advertising goes beyond just creative formats, there is argument on how to reach the audiences that advertisers are looking for (ie. the large portal publishers who have the audiences via the product/services/conte... they provide).

Karps Article/argument is not convincing to me and shows he is bit ignorant of the larger ad market and marketing in general.