Who are you trying to please?

Seth Godin in his article Advertising’s bumpy transition has a few interesting thoughts on what sets priorities of today’s web media. Quite frankly, the bottom line is this:

Since advertising is paying for a big portion of the consumer web, it’s being built to please advertisers. Right now, though, what advertisers are used to buying isn’t what the web is good at building.

Thing is, that as a result of building a product solely for users, advertisers will get a more popular, engaging and attractive platform. In other words - to please advertisers, focus on users.

By shaping your product to please advertisers first, you will disenchant and eventually loose users. And when that happens, advertisers will follow.