Yesterday, I stopped all of our flash based ad campaigns... forever.
In late 2008, we started a large campaign which introduced our first flash ads. We had some fun making these and received mixed responses - some outrage, some love. But overall, I feel that just by using flash ads to communicate, we were becoming a little too closely affiliated with the many scam like flash ads. You know the ones, those before-and-after-weight-loss-body-shots.
Advertising was once a powerful method of communicating, but no more. Thanks to the lowest common denominators in advertising, everyone suffers. Ad blockers are the proof. When the web is filled with before-and-after-weight-loss-body-shots, we block every ad. The 1% of useful information from advertising is not worth the 99% of junk!
So what to do? How can we communicate with those who might want what we've got, without the medium implying we're offering cruft?
Two ways: education and community involvement.
From now on, these two methods will form the pillars of our overall marketing. A reply to a question on stackoverflow. A response to a customer on twitter. It's how FinalBuilder got it's start, before we could afford ad space, and now we're coming back to it because it's authentic and meaningful.
Oh, and we have a few other, more exciting plans to get involved in the community. Watch this space.