Who Ruined The Internet & What Should Marketers Do Instead?

The internet is fundamentally not healthy.

It's sick, and it needs serious correction. But how did we get here? First off, don't blame this on AI. AI was just the straw that broke the camel's back. The real issue started years ago, when the web became commercialized. 

Commercialization isn't bad. In fact, it's a good thing.

Where it all went wrong, IMHO, is when those seeking to commercialize the web started to see the technology behind the web as the audience, not the people. 

We Optimized Our Marketing For Algorithms And For Forgot About People

As the role of any given platform (Google, Twitter, etc.) became more apparent, these media channels started to become the target audience per se. Algorithms became the target audience, and adhering to their needs became the main focus. Marketers started to market to mediums (not the psychic kind) and channels.

When you write it like that, it seems painfully stupid. And to a certain extent, it is. But I want to provide some context to make this slightly more forgiving. 

The internet was new. It still kind of is (well, not new, but young). 

The latent current of that sort of environment is immaturity. We had a new toy to play with (the internet), and this time, the toy was an incredibly powerful one. What made the internet so powerful was also what made it so disastrous. The web could reach an endless number of people without actually ever engaging them.

Think of a Google search. Someone searches for something, clicks the link, and ends up on your website. Do you ever actually engage that person?

The consequences and the impact of our actions were so far removed from actual people that it was a breeding ground for immaturity (and far worse). 

Thus, the content on the web was aimed at "outdoing competitors" or "slightly manipulating algorithms". From copycat content to skyscraper content and more, none of it produced much of anything that even smelled of substance. 

The issue was and still is, the algorithms are machines, and they can't keep up with the nonsense humans will try to pull. 

Think about it for a second. The last year or two has seen Google really target the affiliate space and the level of content (or lack thereof) within it. 

Google has been trying to do that since its August 2018 Core Algorithm Update. 

It took them... (counting fingers)... 6 years. 

That's 6 years of no one being incentivized to stop creating low-quality affiliate content. That's 6 years of the the crap on the web compounding onto itself. 

But that's not even the real problem. 

When Big Brands Saw Sales, They Tore Web Content Quality Apart

The real problem, to me, started when big brands with big budgets started to pull this nonsense. 

These behemoths not only spun up an incredible amount of low-quality content that barely offered any sort of actual value.... they also validated the practice. 

It's one thing if a dude in his mom's basement is throwing together some copycat content in order to rank on Google. 

It's another thing entirely when the biggest financial, health, and tech companies were and still are doing what some dude in his mom's basement is doing, but with more polish. 

The big brands used their trust & authority to validate creating a web filled with crap.

What happened next is where it went sour. 

Big brands that saw the success of this strategy and took it further. Forget their internet content strategy, their entire marketing & product strategies became about getting as much as quickly as possible while offering as little substance as possible. 

Jono Alderson has a great article on this. He argues that the no-code CMSes oversell the ease of creating a website. While they make the technical side seamless, they don't advance the notion that developing a content & marketing strategy to ensure the site thrives takes time, adjustment, etc. 

Just spin up a site, don't worry about the actual brand or content or marketing strategy.

That's a lack of maturity at the highest level. 

I've witnessed this firsthand. 

Companies don't dedicate enough attention to real education with real nuance. They simply want to get you to convert so they can show the numbers & bump up the stock price. 

Is Wix or Shopify, or Squarespace really investing in how to slowly build your content strategy over time, how to adjust it, & how it takes a good year to get going? No. 

But isn't that exactly what they should be doing? And this applies to almost every vertical. The real needs & problems of consumers get purposefully glossed over by brands who simply care about immediate results.

Wil Reynolds did a great talk at SMX about how it's time for brands to hone in on their identity, presence, & perception. 

I couldn't agree more. Great talk. 

The problem is brands already think they're doing that.

Most Big Brands Don't Actually Do Good Marketing, But Think They Do Good Marketing

Many big brands, the ones everyone looks up to, are delusional. 

They delude themselves into thinking that they have a "brand" strategy when, in reality, all they have is a product marketing strategy & not a very good one. When they're not trying to grab traffic, they're busy talking about themselves as if anyone cares. 

Brand is about thinking about who you are, who your audience is, & trying to make a connection that resonates. That's all big-picture kind of stuff. You don't develop a relationship or an association after appearing in chatGPT one time.

The web is flawed because brands won't admit that they have ulterior motives that contradict genuine user needs. They keep trying to create a facade of value & fool themselves into thinking they have a healthy "brand." 

So What Should Your Brand Do?

A web built on the content brands have been pushing isn't healthy. It's just waiting for a correction. The bill has to come due sooner or later.

Google has been saying the web is healthy because there is 45% more content on it. However, this proves the total opposite. 

Google said there is 45% less web content, I'd start thinking things are moving in the right direction. 

I want you to think of every useless web page, every useless listicle, every redundant piece of content you've read on the web: Is the web healthier because there's 45% more of it? 

I have two major pieces of advice for you:

1. Do not blindly follow what the big brands are doing. At the moment, the mega-companies are having the hardest time figuring it out. They're stuck between multiple rocks and multiple hard places:

   
   

   • They don't know how to balance the change in the ecosystem with the pressure of their immediate KPIs. Meaning, they might know they need to change, but someone higher up is pressuring for the immediate KPIs to be maintained, so they can't execute the real changes. 9 out of 10 CMOs will hear the problems of their teams, validate them, and in the same breath demand no decline in any of the performance KPIs. Clearly a not a recipe for success.

     
     

   • The digital ecosystem presents multiple problems. It's everything all at once. The problem big brands have here is that they have multiple teams that compete against each other. Each has different and often contradictory goals as well as different and often contradictory vantage points. They need to sync up and align, but there is no real mechanism within these organizations that allows them to. Mostly due to the C-level not stepping in with the maturity this moment demands. As a result, even if some very smart marketers wanted the brand to pivot, they can't. These brands can't pivot. They are stuck adjusting and fixing things within a totally outdated and flawed framework.

     
     

2. Realize that there is a problem. Too often, I see performance marketers glossing over the fact that the reality of the web is changing. Digital marketers have been riding a wave of getting lunch for free every day, when in reality, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

   
   

   The absolute influx of content that should never have been created and that is still being created is going to cause a market correction. This is simply how reality works. What that correction looks like is a separate conversation.

   
   

   Yes, it is painful. Yes, it is hard. Yes, it is unpleasant. None of this changes the fact that the web as we know it has and is changing. The push for performance, as we've seen it over the past 15-20 years, is over. People are not falling for that anymore, and LLMs have changed the efficacy of the strategy altogether.

   
   

   If you're on the creative side, this applies to you as well. Brand is not some sort of panacea, and the new web doesn't mean you should forgo focusing on performance.

   
   

   All it means is that our marketing, whether we run paid ads, focus on organic search, video content, creative content, whatever... needs to be more mature. It also needs all be aligned (which you could argue is the same thing as your marketing being more mature).

   
   

   It all needs to work together. The idea of "winning on social" while creating blog content that spins out a different message and brand positioning is where the immaturity started.

   
   

   The era of the channel is over; the era of integrated marketing is slowly beginning.