It's hard to imagine a Web without onramps like search engines these days. They've become an essential part of the online experience. It may be equally as hard to imagine what the next phase of online advertising will be, as used to the sponsored links as we are.
Comment.)So there may be (okay, there is) some credibility to My teenager at home, Internet-savvy as he is, still uses the Google search bar to find YouTube and Wikipedia – even though I've fussed at him repeatedly to just type in the URL. He's a good representative of the average surfer – the journey begins with a search engine.
Even then, and even though Google has prided itself (in the days of moving upwards from launch to national conscience) on its clean, unobtrusive interface with text ads tucked neatly to the sides or differentiated up top in the prime real estate area.
But don't count on it staying that way. It's not clear what Sergey Brin meant by "the convergent optimizer" that will be launched from beta-testing, but here is the context in which it is delivered, courtesy of where we think ads are supposed to be.
Call it Google-operant-conditioning. And, as my teenager shows, it's difficult to unlearn bad habits. In order to be noticed, online advertising will have to converge. Microsoft knows it, Google knows it. (Have you heard of this "convergent optimizer?" Fill us in with a the comments
That's just the beginning. When television and the Internet converge, there'll be a whole new models to discuss.
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