Josh Bernoff wrote about the predicted advent of the Apple Tablet and the “new splintered web” in AdAge yesterday. In the minds of ad agency people, it raises questions about how to make sense of new devices and technologies, and turn them into opportunities while holding on to the old standards of shapes and sizes for online advertising, if possible.

I believe that the introduction of every new device and UI just increases the need for scalable solutions, ideas and executions that can be applied across multiple “channels”, devices, and screen sizes.

Over the next few years, we will move from the idea of millions of computers connected by the Internet, to the reality of one huge computer that is the Internet. Every device will be a window into it. Banners and microsites have been an attempt to continue the traditional advertising era idea of standardized spaces into the digital age, but in the new era, the channel-based thinking of the past just won’t be the winning strategy anymore. What matters now is platform ideas, bigger concepts that, on the idea level, are device agnostic, and can then be scaled and executed on different screen sizes etc to convey the same overall idea and functionality across the board.

It won’t be easy, as there will be no ‘one size fits all’ solutions, but hey, when was this business ever easy? And, more importantly, should it be?

Successful agencies will realize that, going forward, this business will be (and it is already) much more about creating utility, producing services and tools than just pushing out effective messaging. And, unlike Josh Bernoff, I don’t think this means that the Internet is getting splintered. I think it means the opposite: we are getting more connected and realizing that the Internet is the highway we all share, we are just looking at it through different windows at different times.

I don’t think that the past 15 years was “the golden age” of the unified Internet, either, and further on in his article Bernoff points it out as well that the new era is not cause for panic. There’s no point in trying to undo the changes.

I think for the past 15 years we’ve been merely learning the basics of what the Internet can bring us, and, for large part, creating interim solutions that have been based on a combination of the past, the “what we know and understand”, and the new. Now, moving forward, we are starting to see the real shift, the shift that will change the advertising industry as we know it, as well as many other industries. To me, that’s not Splinternet – that’s the Digital Age, and for those who are already living it, it comes very natural, despite the challenges we face and the speed at which the changes are happening. So instead of trying to force new standards to replace the old ones, jump in and be flexible, modular, fast, and humble – willing to look at your work with new eyes.

Karri Ojanen