Does the Return of Old School Marketing Make This Ad-Tech Alternative Bigger than Blockchain?

The following post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga.

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The ad-tech industry has ballooned to $350 billion and is dominated by tech giants like Google GOOGL and Facebook FB. But, the fact is that over the last several decades (barring the recent boom in entrepreneurship during COVID-19) small business formation in the U.S. has plummeted, and one reason for this may be due to competition and the power of tech companies.

Currently, of the 31.7 million small businesses in the U.S., few use either Google or Facebook for paid advertising — just 13% use Google and 6% use Facebook, according to Macquarie Research.

To understand where it went wrong, backing up to the pre-internet world when ad-tech didn’t dominate the marketing landscape might help.

Marketing in the Pre-Internet World

The pre-internet marketing world was not just about advertising as a way to find prospects for new customers. Certainly, there were outlets like Yellow Pages and newspaper classified ads. These old-school marketing channels were much more significant than you might imagine.

In 2000, classified ad spend was $19.6 billion. Now, it costs virtually nothing to advertise on platforms like Craigslist. In 2009, the entire Yellow Pages industry earned $26 billion in revenue, which exceeded Google's 2008 earnings of $21.8 billion.

In effect, at least a 50/50 balance between people searching for a business using Yellow Pages or local classified ads and the businesses doing the advertising existed even during the early days of the internet.

Where it Collapsed

One of the reasons for the massive decline of local newspapers has been the loss of revenue from classified ads. Craigslist, for example, is, to all intents and purposes, free.

Yellow Pages and local classifieds were a low and fixed marketing subscription cost that small businesses understood and could afford. In addition, it was largely a fair playing field where even though you could pay more for a bigger local listing, it did not exclude smaller businesses that just had a standard listing. Moreover, nearly every small and local business needed a Yellow Pages listing to get new customers.

Here’s the big question: Of the over 80% of companies that do not (and cannot) use Facebook or Google for paid advertising, what choice do they have for a low-cost subscription-based marketing channel?

Step forward, the newly listed ethical technology company Bubblr, Inc. BBLR.

Leveling the Playing Field

Bubblr has just announced that using its USPTO-approved patent, it will pivot the company to become an open-source platform that allows open source developers to build a completely different new type of app where content can be monetized by the Bubblr platform rather than ad-tech.

These new types of apps will have a button or another mobile control to allow consumers to search for Bubblr’s equivalent of Yellow Pages using a very sophisticated mobile UI for local suppliers of goods and services. This way, the small subscription fees charged to the suppliers can be shared with the app and their content can be monetized.

It is a brand new marketing channel that does not use advertising at all. Instead, it is much more like the old school listings of Yellow Pages and local classifieds.

Some people have described it as a "cross between Tinder and classified ads.” But, it is also about addressing the balance between advertising (convincing individuals to buy a product or service) and old-school listings (providing options for individuals actively looking for certain products and services).

One can imagine the open source community building alternative social media platforms that are not corrupted by ad-tech and all the privacy issues that come with it.

Bubblr’s proposition begs the question: Could this be one of the most significant disruptive changes for the internet since its inception?

“Online advertising is never going to go away, but it needs to have a genuine competitor that does not involve advertising,” says Bubblr CTO Steve Morris.

Critics make the strong argument that having ad-tech as the only marketing channel and mechanism for monetizing free content and services is the root cause of the problems with the internet. Whether it is fake news, radicalizing political and religious views, online scams and online surveillance, dangerous information is one result of the dominance of ad-tech.

For this reason, Morris believes that Bubblr’s open-source platform is an even more significant technology disruptor than blockchain.

Bold Words on the Future?

“Blockchain has always been a very interesting technology searching for applications,” stated Morris. “Blockchain applications are nearly always dependent on utilizing a brand new non-fungible token (NFT) that everyone has to sign up to monetize it. Despite the hype and the money thrown at blockchain applications and despite Bitcoins success, the new applications have never really materialized.”

On the other hand there will certainly be many who disagree — only time will tell which innovations thrive and which do not.

“The significant advantage that Bubblr has is that it starts with a monetization mechanism that works with existing fiat currencies out of the box. New applications using Bubblr to monetize apps that provide free content or services are very easy to envisage.”

Bubblr is currently planning to deliver its ad-free marketplace platform by the end of Q1 2022. 

The preceding post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga. Although the piece is not and should not be construed as editorial content, the sponsored content team works to ensure that any and all information contained within is true and accurate to the best of their knowledge and research. The content that follows is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.