Sponsored Links allows Free Software

I was attending yesterday a comprehensive conference in Paris about e-commerce, looking for a solid update on e-marketing techniques. All major players in the on-line industry were represented - Yahoo, eBay, Google, and Microsoft - and the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) shared with us the latest development of on-line consumers behavior. To let you discover how passionate these individuals were, I'm sharing with you one of the snapshots I took during the keynote. No obvious passion right?

I was expecting some breaking announcement about Web 2.0 related new techniques, even some marketing 2.0 concepts to flourish. Not only was I disappointed but furthermore, Yahoo's France General Manager just told us how he thought Web 2.0 was just a fad, no new news here he said. He referred to a Tim Berners-Lee statement to explain that he would call it Internet t.c, t.c. meaning "tout court", which would translate as something like "Internet period" as Tim defined the Internet as a way for individuals to communicate. Wow! I don't know how much corporate folks at Yahoo would appreciate it.

During the breakout sessions about sponsored links, I even heard professional marketers, especially from the major TV network in France, take some distance with blogging, coining it to a private non influential activity. I had to ask if he was afraid of blogs regarding his advertising business. You don't want to hear his corporate answer, believe me.

Fellow marketers, this is really the time for a marketing 2.0 manifesto to avoid for these wandering executives to ignore the paradigm shift we clearly are going through. As it always does during such eras -- read Innovator's Dilemma if you didn't already -- incumbents are trying to deny or ignore reality. This usually is announcing their business model fade if not their company's. As a result, brilliant and dynamic small companies are becoming the new category gorillas.

All these individuals might have missed this very interesting venture at spiceworks, providing an IT Management Software for ... FREE! What is their business model? They let you install and use their solution for free, recouping on sponsored links clicks-- especially Google's --. Yes: advertising is now funding software. They have attracted more than 5,000 companies since launch on July 31st. Read this for more. And this is not isolated, as Universal recently announced music was going to be free as advertising was funding it as well. Universal is backing SpiralFrog, a start-up we already mentioned before here.

Bite Marketing 2.0 before it bites you!