Discussion with my five-year-old son a couple of weeks ago:

Him: Hey, you know why buses are useful for more than getting you places?

Me: Why?

Him: Because on the side they tell you about movies.

Me: That’s useful.

Him: Right. Let’s say there’s a movie you want to see, and you know it’s coming in the fall, but you don’t know which fall. You can look on the sign on the bus and it will tell you. And then you’ll know. And then you can go.

Me: So the advertisements are helpful.

Him: What’s an advertisement?

Over the last few years the business model for consumer software has changed dramatically, and I don’t know anyone who expects it to return to its former boxed-software-on-shelves-in-bricks-and-mortar-stores “glory”. Developers focusing on advertising as their business model of choice are all over the map. In the worst cases, developers come up with a site that may or may not have a credible value proposition for customers, and then leave a rectangle somewhere on their pages to be filled with ads courtesy of various ad networks. In some cases, the software/site is interesting and then the developer spends time moving the rectangle around the page to try and generate even more ad revenue. Sometimes they create even more rectangles. Sometimes there are so many rectangles that they start killing the software. And in the worst cases, there’s no actual software or site, it’s all a sham to present more rectangles. (In the interest of full disclosure I’ve played around with many of these techniques myself so I have a basic understanding of how it works.)

But advertising and valuable consumer software don’t have to be oil and water. I’ve spoken to people who think advertising is a “pollutant” when it comes to software experiences. But this is distinctly uncreative thinking. It’s true that unwanted, blinking, distracting, advertising degrades the experience, sometimes to an awful degree. This video is from before my time, but I’ve seen these clips enough to recognize this long lost form of TV:

The lines between content and advertising were blurry (and to a certain extent they appeared to be out in the open). In this example at least, it was clear that the sponsor was playing a key role in bringing the program to the screen. Over the years however, (at least) the public lines between content and advertising have gotten brighter. And now this same dichotomy brings itself to software. Note: for me software and content are more points on a spectrum of consumer experiences than two completely exclusive categories (e.g. are games content or software?).

But the distance that TV shows for example had traditionally set between themselves and their ads was based on a technological anomaly. The anomaly of the captive audience. The lack of pausing, skipping, or any significant degree of random access to the content on television had given the networks a captive audience for their sponsors’ ads. But those days are over. And now it’s time to innovate. Now the captive audience is free.

The new world of advertising in television and the new world of advertising in software are the same world. The major web networks and the major tv networks all measure their effectiveness in terms of the number of minutes they get from each user/viewer per week. The greater the number of minutes, the larger audience these creators have for their advertising partners.

Business that create valuable experiences for customers (software, content, etc.) need to find new ways to bring their customers together with advertisers. There are ways to do this with creativity, and quality by following these two principles:

Transparency is essential. Don’t hide sponsorship relationships. Be honest. Nothing undermines your credibility more than sneaking advertising into consumer experiences.

Deliver value instead of hoping for tolerance. Advertising as part of a consumer experience should enhance it, not just “not detract from it too much”.

And that’s where we’re going to start.

Is it possible to make great experiences that customers love and from which advertisers get tons of value? We think it’s absolutely possible and we’re going to give it our best shot. For now think of Jackson Fish as a branded software studio. Over time we may bring software to market with non-advertising business models, but there’s so much opportunity for innovation when it comes to connecting advertisers with customers, we’re happy to start here. Oh, and one more thing… we’re going to have a kickass time doing it as well. :)