This is a very basic review of web marketing, but as all good reviews go, avoiding assumptions provide review.

Taking a good look at site strategies, aside from SEO, there are a number of gadgets, strategies and embellishments employed to drive traffic to a marketing message. It's clear that apps such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter etc, hold a certain "collective" via "created experiences" - the intimacy via video sharing, the immediate discussion via chatting and email, the involvement via community building, etc.

Having noticed these "technology-facilitated experiences" mentioned on prime time slots, it appears this route to marketing is enjoying some form of success. Appearing as it is within broadcast, these tools are certainly generating additional followers. I suspect the anticipated result, the generation of a collective demographic for marketers, is taking hold. As a marketing tool it's a nifty one for offline brands. Following traditional marketing savvy, they're creating a technology which ensures less hit and miss, less reliance on focus groups and is becoming as an effective tool as any developed for media planners.

Nifty, but this process is also developing the following questions and mentions:
o The web was to be an information superhighway. Yet, for whom?
o Are online brand providing online warehouses - of people - for offline marketers or are they creating interest in the web?
o Tools rather than "brands" appear to dominate the space for the immediate purpose of Monetization.

This last factoid is of great interest to me as I've been sharing with potential clients the need to first acknowledge the web as one which thrives via perspective and should not be reliant upon technology.

I offer the following: Brand Display, Brand Relevance and Value Aggregation, my take provided on each.

Brand Display:
Store Fronts offer the most unique opportunity for a sale in a non-crowded space. Cultural derivations aside, storefronts provide access & reinforcement - via product relevance and quality customer service - to brand relevance, brand loyalty and ultimately a sale.

Web design initially followed suit with a similar yet limited "Best Foot Forward" strategy. Brand Value Content was "cribbed" from existing marketing material and delivered within a static platform: About Us, What we Do, Products, Services, etc.

The primary liability was in the formed Relevance messaging which was limited by static presentations.

Web design strategies since the beginning then developed along what we currently consider, albeit misappropriated dubbed "New", Web 2.0 web strategies - the surfacing of buried content via XML, PHP, AJAX, DHTML and CSS; the necessity to "generate" content fro the sake of retaining sales potential; and, the improved retention of these users - pseudo "uniques" - for sales via all the above.

Although retention is required for Sales to tickle away, little takeway is offered by marketers to the users in regards brand relevance and value, were you to follow the path from concept through sale, disconnect happens with every ad click.

Brand Relevance
What is brand relevance, and more importantly how do we generate brand relevance via these "removed" technology. We have to maintain that it is still considered unhealthy to spend hours upon hours on the web, in front of a computer, or absent from social interaction although you may be typing away on your PDA while dining with friends.

As appealing as they are, the immediate value proposition remains as "Acme" brand will succeed if it remains "Technologically Current" with the others. These Web 2.0 strategies offer little in regards brand differentiation, and returning to the notion of Brands - brand value and relevance with the consumer.

Remembering - new application development cultivates information. Information allows for the creation of interests - new concepts for applications and features. These then provide offline branding opportunities via retention which ultimately leads us to a sale. Hopefully.

Monetization, please take us home.

Monetization may be the answer, and may unfortunately, as an end-game, prove fatal.
Apro pos the existence of startups as "brands", viability should consider longevity. This is however, undermined by the following:

1) Funding reliance - it weakens an enterprise's focus on Autonomy, Growth, and Brand Development.

2) It supports a position within UI/UX that standards should be standard.

3) Creates the notion that Launch and Beta ensure success as long funding remains an option.

4) Provides assurances that parity is competition and that maintenance of brand differentiation is costly and absorbs focus.

In this light we must admit, the development of true "brands" within the net is non existent. It is clearly the marketing of technology: Video, Communication, Governance, Heuristics, Algorithms, etc through monikers such as YouTube, Facebook, AIM, and others.

Video, chat rooms, community areas, and games are great and provide an experience, yet they are not brands. They are repackaged Entrepreneurial Technology UPC's which when exhausted will be replaced by another package of assembled technologies.

They are more likely valuation platforms for elevating stock and capital potential. They do not create loyalty, but attract ambiguous popularity. Hence, relevance and value from a user's perspective is moot. They are however fantastic user aggregators and great demographic definers intended to provide targeting vehicles for marketers.

Enterprises which embrace this are becoming brands in their own right. Yet, there are a very few of them which lead and power the internet.

Relevance, I then suggest, begins with perspective and not technology. Intimate messaging creates a necessity from within and draws a customer to find you, rather than one which occasionally pokes and bumps you towards an ad.

Value Aggregation:
"You have two roads opening," I say finishing. You can either develop your online presence, tapping into known applications to cultivate awareness - a time consuming effort, or you can develop relevance tools within, employing them to locate and draw in potential customer bases who support value propositions similar to yours. This would secured longer lasting connections between brands and their consumers.

Entrepreneurial UPC practices are great. Yet, in regards building brands and surfacing useful marketing messages along intimate connections, developers might want to start by defining their effort as either a "brand" or a "moniker" for the purpose of valuations later down the road.

Anything less will only dilute your marketing expectations.