Clemons, Eric. "Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet." [Weblog Entry.] TechCrunch. 22 Mar 2009. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/22/why-advertising-is-failing-on-the-internet/). 8 Apr 2009.

    Professor Clemons holds a strong viewpoint: “the expected drop in internet advertising revenues this year was neither unpredictable nor unpredicted, nor was it caused solely by the general recession and the decline in retail sales.”  He places a lot of the blame of the advertising decline on the mere fact that consumers know how to get what they want. The three main reasons he provides for advertising’s imminent failure are: “1. Consumers do not trust advertising, 2. Consumers do not want to view advertising, 3. Consumers do not need advertising.” He proceeds to unravel these statements, arguing that “messages are observed by potential customers who are performing other activities.” Presently, there are only a “few examples of website symbiosis, where community content on one site adds considerable value for another.”
    The argument made by Professor Clemons further complicates my argument. He basically says outright that advertising on the internet is destined for failure. Throughout his blog, he constantly refers to the messages as the problem and how they are “not trusted, not wanted, and not needed.” This does provide a little window of hope for my argument; if banner advertisements could be trusted, then maybe they might have an impact on internet behavior. One way of doing this might be to restrict the vast amounts that are allowed on a particular page. Yes, frequency of a particular advertisement is helpful, but if people are bombarded with various advertisements, they will tend to tune them all out, even the ones that might in fact appeal to them. In addition to decreasing the number of banner advertisements, I think it would be extremely effective to have certain banner advertisements for certain sites. Therefore, you bypass the step of intriguing the consumer, for they are already on that particular website because they have an interest in its content. Therefore, it is up to the content of the banner advertisement to further intrigue the consumer.