“Remember when friends were more than a number of; that you collected on your social media ap and cookies were a delicious treat you actually could pick up and eat! My dear friends the times are a changing.”

As many of you know I have been around and involved in the advertising and marketing world for a long time. As a matter of fact, it all started for me in the mid 1960’s. I have experienced going from Hot metal type to computer generated type, from creating new ideas with brain power to let’s see what comes out of the computer.

For a long time, many of us have enjoyed the benefits of social media and have built businesses and followings around it. We have also experienced as providers-built followings the benefits were restricted and even removed. Just like the dot com bust of the 80’s at the end of the day money has to be made. In many cases we are all paying for benefits that may have started out free and now are fee based.

So, what is the big deal? Traditional advertising as we knew it has been ravaged; traditional retail is in a state of adjustment; how to drive it; what drives it, and how to bridge the gap of addressing each generational group needs to be defined. This process takes time and in our fast-moving market place with so many channels getting a clear focus has become more and more difficult.

It is absolutely imperative to define and capture your customer base. To that end every business however small or large needs to define and have control of its ability to communicate directly and capture all potential consumers of their products and brand.   

2024 will be marked in many cases by the loss of third-party cookies. This will leave a huge gap in businesses’ ability to take advantage of what used to be available. We have gone from the age of “location-location-location” to “audience-audience-audience”. Capture them now and build for the future.

These are my thoughts and opinions and I would appreciate any comments…

 12/15/2023 alan meschkow