There’s been some nipping at Google’s reigning advertising heels lately. Players like Adify, and Skyrider are all attempting to reinvent the game by making sure which ads show up where and giving up the controls of that to both buyers and sellers of advertising to work that out. Personally, I think that’s a positive step towards democratizing the practice of advertising itself, but then what about Videos and Social Media?

Although the monetization thinking is emerging in to models like MetaCafe and BrightCove, the predominantly open and inviting environment of social spaces puts the traditional contextual ad model in question. Social spaces work because of shared connections and interests. When advertising tries to guess what that context means, it is generally mistaken and thus gets largely ignored. The potential to be relevant is obviously huge, but is contextual advertising” that was never asked for really the answer? Are social networks themselves the answer to real contextual relevance? Or is it something else like entirely different like the co-browsing applications such as Medium and Flock?

The Giga OM blog had a very interesting perspective on this, and it got me thinking. Just as the telephone started out wanting be what the radio ultimately became, there’s a need and room for both solutions. Similarly, I don’t believe advertising relevance is about one approach vs. another. Things are only contradictory or opposing when you can’t see the whole picture. Maybe contextual placements to recommendations is the Yin to the Yang the ad industry desperately needs. Nature co-exists with contradiction, how would an interconnected market ecosystem be any different?