AdSoak.com

I love zombie movies. There is something that has always excited me about the danger of an oncoming zombie apocalypse. How would I react and is it possible to be prepared? How can you stop the single minded, autopilot zombie when it approaches you?

During my train of deep thought I realized that in a way I have become a zombie myself. Not the brain eating, shuffling kind, but the brain-numb digital kind. I whole-heartedly admit that I surf the web almost continuously. Whether I am at work, on my laptop at home or my iPhone, I am hardly ever disconnected for more than 30 minutes at a time.  As a person with an insatiable thirst for knowledge I am always reading. The problem is that I often find myself just looking at drivel.

I frequent numerous, news, industry and entertainment sites looking for content. However, when there is not a specific topic I am looking for I tend to digitally graze. This can bring about some interesting topics and tidbits of knowledge but more often than not I waste an hour or more of my life and truly get nothing out of it. Imagine reading a book while thinking about numerous tasks you need to accomplish at home and at work. You simply won’t retain any of the information you consume. While you may have a general emotional sensation regarding the contents of the book the actual meat will be left on the pages.

With the continued proliferation of new online content providers and aggregators and the new devices being sold to enhance our consumption of them, at what point do we just become brain-numb digital zombies? If we really aren’t paying attention while we surf, no ad or marketing message will get through to us. Have we already hit the apocalypse and just not noticed it?

As reported on AppleInsider.com, the company is in the process of hiring developers to extent the current iPhone/iPod developer framework to include advertising. It appears that Apple will be creating additional functionality to allow application developers to easily add paid advertising into their applications. This new feature will allow publishers to add a new simplified revenue stream into their published applications with minimal effort.

Apple hasn’t yet delved into the ad network arena so it will be interesting to see how they sell the new mobile ad inventory that will of course become available to advertisers. I also want to see how will they target users with relevant marketing messages? Will they pull usage information from each application the user currently runs or will they leverage information about their iTunes purchasing and browsing habits. It will be very interesting to see this unfold over the next year or so.

While putting my son to bed tonight I read him the story of the Tortise and the Hare. This is a story I have read many times as both a child and an adult. The moral to the story is simple. Take your time to ensure that things you do are done well. Don’t rush around from thing to thing just because you can.

As marketers we can tend to focus on the latest trends looking for the next silver bullet. Well, while we may get lucky from time to time, we probably waste more time than we should on unproven tactics.

I’m not implying we shouldn’t try new things but let’s be sure to temper our ambitions and make sure we work hard on a few things to bring them to fruition. Remember slow and steady wins the race.