teh internets iz mek meh stoopit

A major part of my job consists of surfing the web in search of the latest interactive marketing trends. It’s a lot more draining than one would think. Sure, there’s a lot of cool stuff out there, but day after month after year of surfing has shrunk my attention span to that of an ADD-afflicted first-grader. I sometimes worry that this has made me a bit blind to trends that have yet to be tested on the Czech market but seem to be successful elsewhere, especially in the west.

Another part of the problem is that the Czech ad and interactive marketing agencies suffer from a lack of originality and creativity. Most, if not all, of the proposals that come through our team’s inboxes are Czech-ified versions of innovative western online advertising executions. It’s as if the creatives have resigned themselves to the fact that the online ad industry has hit a plateau and now the game’s all a matter of style over substance. Attempts are being made at viral and 2.0 marketing ploys, using flash games, widgets, videos, fake personal websites and fake profiles on social networking sites, targeted seeding, and messageboard lurking (or planting? The jargon escapes me). Surveys are conducted, results are analyzed, but a handful of web users, whether beginner or advanced, casual or hardcore, simply cannot ensure the success or failure of an interactive marketing execution.

That challenge provides stimulation for the work I do. At the same time I suffer from a kind of tunnel vision I’ve developed as web surfer. I ignore about 99% of all banner ads – the last one to interest me enough to prompt a click-through was Microsoft’s Rabbit Rescue banner for Office 2007. The video it led me to is entertaining (see below), but did it prompt me to buy the product? No, not really. I was going to buy it anyway, so all the ad did was make me eager to buy it.

Flash games are fun, but I get bored with them after a couple of minutes (though a good first-person shooter would keep my attention for a bit longer). The only video site I browse thoroughly is ebaumsworld.com because they specialize in the kinds of videos that I go through like potato chips – mainly people fighting and doing incredibly stupid shit and getting hurt. Sure, it’s morbid, but sometimes I like to test my tolerance. I don’t pass on most of the videos I watch since I don’t particularly like it when people pass stuff on to me, the videos that I get spammed with tend to be either too twee or too vulgar (I have my limits) for my tastes. So I’ve lost much of my faith in viral videos as well.

Nowadays the only sites I visit on a regular basis are The Escapist (the web’s best gaming magazine), Facebook, my iGoogle page, isohunt.com, mininova.org, eztv.nl, and icanhascheezburger.com. My addiction to ICHC makes me think surfing has damaged my brain.

Maybe, just maybe, a Czech version of rofldogs could be a viable short-term investment.