Has Online Advertising Lost Its “Schwerpunkt”?
By Jaffer Ali

A campaign [operation] without schwerpunkt is like a man
without character.
- Field Marshal Paul Von Hindenburg

Ever since Sun Tzu’s Art of War, business schools have
borrowed concepts from great military thinkers. Miyamoto
Musashi’s Book of Five Rings has been used extensively to
direct short and long term strategies. Patton’s brilliant
essay, Secret of Victory has guided my own personal
business philosophy.

One of these concepts, which I contend is more timely and
appropriate than ever, is the principle of schwerpunkt,
first introduced nearly 200 years ago by the German
philosopher, Karl von Clausewitz, in his brilliant
treatise, On War. US military strategist, John Boyd, and
his acolytes helped introduce the concept of schwerpunkt
to the modern US military.

There is no English-language equivalent of schwerpunkt,
and thus, it has been subject to varying interpretations
by its practitioners. “Center of gravity” and “focus of
intent” are common usages. But the phrase that seems best
able to capture its essence is “weight of effort”. Business
is a lot like war in that resources, human as well as
capital, must be deployed properly lest one lose the
battle or even worse, the war.

With this in mind, does it not make sense to ask ourselves:
Has online advertising lost its schwerpunkt?

The answer is a resounding “yes”. And to those of us who
offer a growing critique of the online industry, the
question seems almost rhetorical. When the weight of our
effort eschews creativity for algorithmic reduction, we
have indeed lost our center of gravity; our focus of
intent; our schwerpunkt.

We have fostered an attitude that devalues relationships
by placing technology at the fulcrum of a perverse cause
and effect. John Boyd believed that people came first;
empowered by ideas that were in turn facilitated by
technology. We have juxtaposed this simple recipe with an
inverted order that places technology first and people,
last. But technology does not dream, and without creative
sustenance, relationships starve to death. Creativity
can’t inspire technology, it can only inspire us. Relation-
ships, not technology, must define our schwerpunkt.

This misappropriated weight of effort is revealed in a
recent survey of advertisers who were asked to prioritize
the qualities they seek in an agency. The survey comes on
the heels of an identical one conducted three years ago.
The bottom line: a complete change in schwerpunkt in just
three years! Creativity and strategic thinking and planning
have become subservient to technology under the guise of
analytics.

In 2005, those marketers surveyed listed the order of
qualities they looked for in their agencies:

1. Quality of Creative Content
2. Price/Cost
3. Innovation and Strategic value
4. Traditional print, offline services
5. Sophisticated analytics/measurement
6. Proficiency in emerging/interactive

In 2008 the results of the same survey were quite
different:

1. Sophisticated analytics/measurement
2. Proficiency in emerging/interactive
3. Price/Cost
4. Quality of creative (virtual tie with price/cost)
5. Traditional print, etc.
6. Innovation and Strategic value

The sad truth is, our “focus of intent” or where the
industry is placing its “weight of effort”, our
schwerpunkt, has shifted dramatically away from
creativity, quality and innovation. What now passes
as innovation in online advertising is relegated to
technological innovation.

John Boyd was not against technology. In fact, he
practically designed the F-16. But he preached that
technology should never come ahead of people. This is
true in war as well as business. He spoke of three
components in warfare:

People – Ideas – Hardware

This translates into the modern troika of:

Relationships – Creativity – Technology

It is obvious that online advertising and media have put
its weight of effort into technology. The first two,
“relationships” and “creativity” now carry almost no weight
at all; rendered virtually impotent by a sterile, inanimate
master.

Our technology stands poised to “connect us” but in reality
we have become more alienated than ever before. How deep
can relationships created from Linked In, Facebook or
Twitter possibly be? How often have you found yourself
competing for attention against someone’s Blackberry? Is
it any wonder that our children prefer to text rather than
call each other on the phone? They now purposely avoid
speaking in complete sentences. ROTFLMAO!

We rely more and more on technological solutions to market-
ing problems. We’ve conditioned ourselves to accept a .3%
click-through rate precisely because it’s so precise! As
long as we arrive at such miserable click through rates
via mysterious algorithms that sift through mounds of
data, the .3% holds up well.

Worse yet, there is an unending source of funding from
the VC community that keeps this flawed game plan on its
misguided trajectory. Money has poured into You Tube,
MySpace, Digg, Facebook, and Twitter—relationships measured
by the ton in 140 characters or less. Ad networks push
quantity over quality and defend a 99.7% failure rate with
a straight face.

We have seen the enemy, and he is us. May the best
schwerpunkt win.

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Jaffer Ali is CEO of Vidsense, the Web’s largest video
advertising network. With more than 80,000 advertiser-
friendly video clips licensed from major film and TV
studios, the Vidsense network of more than 20,000 safe-
for-work partner websites delivers millions of qualified
visitors directly to advertiser websites on a pure Pay-
Per-Click (PPC) basis. Vidsense is to Adsense what video
is to print — a far more engaging and compelling environ-
ment for consumers and advertisers alike.

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