Speaking of perfectly targeted ads.

Here's a screen shot of a NYT article about Raymond Felton of the Knicks.

And in the right margin an ad for a tech conference put on by O'Reilly.

I would put in my profile something like this: "No more offers of tech conferences that don't include speaking offers."

That would be what Doc Searls calls a "conversation."

We're getting closer.

Pbump's story

Reminds me of a story about me, John Doerr, Google and Philip Bump.

A long time ago I wrote a story about John Doerr, and it ranked very high on Google in a search for John Doerr. I joked that my investment in Doerr was doing well. As if "owning" him on Google had some dollar value.

Philip Bump, a clever dude, bought an adword next to that search, knowing that I would look at it, and the ad said "Hey Dave Winer..." I laughed. But that's as perfect as targeting can get. He had a market of one. And I actually did see it and loved the attention.

He now writes for The Atlantic, and he told me the story when I went down there to visit last year.

In today's podcast/blog post this line is the one that resonated most with people.

• Perfectly targeted ads are just information.

But it's not the first time this idea has appeared on scripting.com.

In 2006, I wrote a piece entitled "Making money with ads? Not much longer..."

Here's the key paragraph:

• When they finish the process of better and better targeted advertising, that's when the whole idea of advertising will go poof, will disappear. If it's perfectly targeted, it isn't advertising, it's information. Information is welcome, advertising is offensive. Who wants to pay to create information that's discarded? Who wants to pay to be a nuisance? Wouldn't it be better to pay to get the information to the people who want it? Are you afraid no one wants your information? Then maybe you'd better do some research and make a product that people actually want to know about.

I read two pieces today that stimulated a 14-minute podcast.

The two pieces

1. Jeff Jarvis: Philanthropy and news.

2. Marc Andreessen on the future of the news business.

Basic ideas

1. 20th century news was about information flowing through small numbers of reporters to large numbers of readers.

2. This was necessitated by the technology, which was one-to-many.

3. 21st century technology doesn't have this limit.

4. Advertising is evolving, it's becoming more like a todo list to follow up on the things you're interested in.

5. Eventually you will be able to write your own queries, and have companies make offers to you. This is the model Doc Searls has been talking about for years.

6. Perfectly targeted ads are just information.

7. News organizations will evolve too.

8. Their mission is to make information flow effective.

9. To facilitate, as before, but with far more writers. Open, like Wikipedia is open.

10. The quality of a news org will be in its writing, research, integrity. Their challenge is to scale that to meet the demand, and the capabilities of the new technology.

11. Old thinking -- news writing is exclusive.

12. New way -- news is written by many (but nowhere near everyone).

13. The power of a news organization is limited by the capacity of the wires. An organization like the NYT has more than a small interest in making the infrastructure of Manhattan world class. Right now it's far from it.

Comments

1. It's kind of amazing that Bloomberg of all people didn't get this. He was a three-term mayor, while NYC fell far behind the rest of the world.