What do people in marketing actually do?

People seem to be getting sick of the "viral marketing" tactics of Buzzfeed and Upworthy, which is dominating the online space. What's the next phase of online marketing then, if this trend seems to be on the way out?

• Answer:

  I think it's a two tier internet with people paying for quality content. In a world of content that's free, it's our attention span that becomes lucrative. We're not treated not like valued subscribers, customers or contributers, but fair game and as eyeballs to exploit. And  yet we have no choice to pay with our credit cards and not with our attention span. This leads to: Link Bait. Disgusting attention grabbing headlines that act as link bait and cause us to waste time reading about things that we'd never normally be interested in. At best is the prevalence of Business Insider type headlines that misleads us to stories with vacuous content. At worst it's the deeply offense crying for attention of tweets like this http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/11/25/upworthy_headline_for_molestation_a_bridge_too_far.html Endless Pre-rolls and unnecessary video content. Since pre-roll ads are harder to ignore and offer richer messaging potential, they are way more valuable. Now instead of reading a short 20 second text piece quickly, we're shown a 30 second ad, and a badly formatted video news story that takes 2 mins to get the same point accorss. Terrible content Since internet space is unlimited and content is now so cheap, we now face a plethora of crappy content even on quality content providers sites. When it cost a few cents per year to host a page with boring content, but it could reap a few dollars in marginal ad revenue, it still makes sense for new sites to host crap content and still make money. We then face a barrage of link baited articles from lower quality sites from outfits like Outbrain, to try to grab our attention further downmarket to make more money. Visual Clutter Many internet sites are at best a mess and at worse, completely impossible to navigate. In a world of  "auto play pre-rolls" and "auto expanding banners"  or page dominate MPU's,  it's impossible to find a news site or TV site that I actually find remotely pleasant to view. Poor experiences. We also have content formatted in  ways to suit the generation of money and not to make the viewing experience decent. Whether it's stories that are formatted to last 10 pages requiring 10 clicks, or 'Welcome screens" or "Galleries" with images and ads, the general online experience is sabotaged to ensure ad money can make it through. Solution - The premium internet. Why can't we now get a full range of internet experiences that are premium. The FT and New York times shows that there is value in subscription models, why can't content providers of all types create paid models. I'd pay $10 a month for Facebook with no ads, and make Facebook about 40 times more money that they currently make from me. I'd pay $4 per month for Twitter with no ads or promoted tweets and make them 40 times more money. I'd pay $2 per week for Business Insider if it could stop the stupid headlines and delete 60% of the worst articles. I'd pay the BBC $30 per month to see all BBC content including TV online. It would not just be about an Ad free model, it may be about better functionality, more on this later.