As content gets easier to do, advertisers are just doing it

Scott Karp posed the question a couple of weeks ago is content still a business? He came, unsurprisingly, to the conclusion that it is not. And right on cue, rather than advertise its new 1 Series on existing local content sites, BMW has simply created a local content destination with EMAP and Google Maps to promote the line (via Brandrepublic).

When content could only be delivered by the owner of a printing press or a TV station it made sense for advertisers to piggyback the economies of scale and attention aggregation achieved by content creation specialists. Now anyone can create and distribute content the advertisers are just going off and doing it themselves. See Bud TV. See the plethora of successful advergames. And see BMW's 1off.com.