Partner Article

Why the web loves all things simple…

For more years than I care to remember, I have always viewed this web world of ours with a stubbornly provincial mind-set.

From a local point of view; as opposed to one honed through the metropolitan mind-set that sits, for example, at the top of York Way - the home of the Guardian. Or, indeed, up and down Charlotte Street, the home of the UK’s bigger, smarter national ad agencies.

In 2007, I sat there on a revenue panel at a ‘NewsInnovation’ conference in New York and listened to the big, smart guys from the big, smart US ad networks tell me that ‘top down’ ruled… that only if you had the traffic and traction on your website would they let you play with their big, smart ad-serving kit.

So if our Ian on JesmondLocal opted to run a Britney Spears blog, he might get a chance to play with their toys.

If he decided, however, to deliver a news and community engagement platform for the people of one, particular Newcastle suburb, then he was on his own. He would be left to fend for himself; his mumbers didn’t stack.

I’ve always railed against that notion; that all we, out here in local land, can expect off those mighty, metropolitan types is the crumbs off their table; the spare, unloved and unwanted inventory that they can tumble down the traffic food chain. From the top of Madison Avenue down…

On Friday, Addiply took one more small step in terms of turning their world upside down.

Because we rolled out a ‘bottom up’ ad solution that now encompasses 2,600 local UK websites; one for nigh-on every UK postcode district in the UK. The details of this roll-out are here.

For that we have to thank James Rudd; new owner of the AboutMyArea platform, but it gives us a ‘network’. A simple, straight-forward network.

And this, for me, is the big kick.

Not for the commercial opportunity that it offers - as every ad agency and marketing bod in the land (traffic, price and engagement permitting) can literally see the advertising opportunities that can exist within an individual UK postcode district - rather the way, hopefully, that we deliver a simplicity that is wholly in tune with the way the web works.

It doesn’t do complexity. It wasn’t built to be a complex beast; or rather we - as humans - weren’t built to be slaves to an algorithm.

As local advertisers, why should I tie my marketing fortunes to the whim of an algorithm in California - when all I want to do is place an online ad in Jesmond?

If you read one thing this summer, have a look at Clay Shirky’s thoughts on the collapse of complex business models - and then apply such thoughts to the world unfolding around us. Not least across the Eurozone and the difficulties a ‘Big Whale’ in London had in taming JP Morgan’s own, complex business models.

The web - like all of us locals - does simples. End of.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Rick Waghorn .