The Future of Advertising: become like... Content

When ads become so targeted, personalized, contextual, location-based, meaningful and relevant that I will want to see them (or at least not try to avoid them), then we are getting somewhere. I think that "Advertising IS Content" will be the key to web-native (and therefore mobile-native) advertising and marketing - all else will fall short of getting great results.  I wrote about this in June 2008, here, and in yesterday's presentation at CMMA 2009 (the future of mobile marketing).

Some nice examples that are heading in this direction are the BMWZ4 Paint by Powerslide iphone application (a great example for branded apps), Jeep's 'have fun out there' campaign, and Apple's 'second opinion' commercial on the NYT website (thanks to Frank at MediaArts in LA, btw). What we really need is cutting-edge creative work that is based on a complete and real-time understanding of how people are starting to mix real-life experiences, the web, mobile and social media.