Here we go again

Over the last few weeks I've noticed several outdoor posters advertising new online businesses. Very reminisent of the turn of the century when I was working in London.

Only difference is the newspapers aren't profiling these companies like they did the chino and chambray shirt wearing dotcom start-ups of a few years back.

Something else that's been reminding me a lot of the dotcom era is the way that many of the new online businesses are basing their model on attracting lots of advertising.

Have these people learnt nothing?

Maybe they were too young to have fully experienced the bursting of the dotcom bubble.

It seems I'm not the only person who's noticed this re-emergence of dotcom era thinking. So too has Maurice Levy, head honcho of global ad group Publicis.

Speaking at the Monaco Media Forum this weekend, Levy said:

"Far too many people are building plans based on advertising and they may well be disappointed because there is not enough money for everyone.

It's exactly the same situation as we saw at the end of the 1990s, when everyone thought that because he had a website he'd get the valuation.

Now everyone building a Web 2.0 operation believes he will receive the advertising."

As George Santayana famously said, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Only time will tell I guess.

Thanx to CSM for the pic.