Guest article by Gerd Leonhard on Raedar - Franklin Rae: ” With the explosive growth of the internet, mobile devices and social networking, the connected media world that we live in is indeed a very different world – and it will only continue to evolve. Brands and broadcasters – and their marketers – must look at a how they can adapt to this new connected landscape, and harness its potential for offering truly personalised experiences to audiences and consumers.

Attracting these consumers is itself a new challenge. Most of us will no longer tolerate interruptions, meaningless pitches, garish pop-ups, Las Vegas-style skyscraper ads or junk email. We are looking for real meaning, solid relevance, timeliness, and yes, transparency and truthfulness. If adverts and messages to buy content do not provide real value to us, we will quickly lock them out of our lives and put them on the ‘infinitely ignored’ list. Irrelevant messages that encourage us to purchase items we don’t need are just noise.

One might therefore argue that advertising itself is becoming content, since it is only the relevant, desired, opted-in and followed content that we spend time on – because it has …read on.”