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Repeating History: Internet Marketing Laws and Outlaws

Written on

January 10th 2006

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by Michael H. Sproule  |

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Karl Marx is said to have once remarked, “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” In the history of Internet marketing we’ve clearly arrived at the farcical stage of the game.

Almost as soon as any new technology has arrived on the Internet, marketers have been quick to exploit it — often in unsavory of ways. Email led to spam. Cookies led to privacy-invasive consumer tracking. Downloadable software toolbars and utilities led to adware. Javascript in web browsers led to pop-up ads.

Each time we’ve seen the same cycle repeat itself. The initial marketers jumping on a new technology operate in a gray area somewhere between public outrage and downright illegality. A backlash ensues in which every available avenue, such as blocking technology, legal challenges and community pressure, is used in an attempt to stamp out the offending marketing. And inevitably all such avenues fail. Instead over time the Internet community comes to tolerate the marketing. It becomes just a background nuisance. A cost of being online. Whereupon, almost magically, the previously deplored marketing technique becomes legitimate.

Of course, it’s inevitable that each new advertising technique, if it generates sales, will eventually become legitimate. We can castigate the marketers who first brought us these methods, but they’ve actually performed a service. If the advertising techniques they pioneered can generate sales, despite the annoyance and even enmity they engender among consumers, we know the techniques must be pretty effective. Perhaps it is cynical to say, but anything that effective simply cannot remain outlaw for long.