Sarah Haskins is part of InfoMania’s line up of commentators that pokes fun at mainstream media. Sarah’s biggest contribution is her recurring segment “Target Women.”

“Target Women” is a video commentary that takes a satirical look at television adverts that target women. As we can see above Sarah doesn’t hold back when discussing the rather broad generalizations that these commercials assume.

Watching a satirical commentary on television adverts exposes one of the major contrasts with broadcast media and the internet. Broadcast media is riddled with assumptions while the internet by its very nature is void of assumptions. Take for example the ads discussed above, they are completely based on the assumptions of the ad executives that created them, and as a result they fall victim to the risk of being irrelevant, ineffective, and annoying. Now, don’t get me wrong, mainstream ad agencies spend millions of dollars on market research, and demographic studies, all so they can make calculated assumptions. But, in the end they are still assumptions none the less!

The internet on the other hand, by its very nature makes very little assumptions. We visit websites that we want to. We digest information that we have requested. 98% of social media is an opt-in medium. And, unless you are visiting a site like Hulu, there are no commercial breaks on the internet. Instead the vast majority of the ads online are topic specific to the sites they are on. I could be reading an article about how to build a bird house and find an ad in the margin for bird house plans.

Effective internet marketing is void of irrelevance. Effective internet marketing is void of assumptions. Effective internet marketing should provide the user as much, if not close to as much, value as the content they are promoting. Effective internet marketing isn’t about gambling away marketing dollars on false assumptions but strategically promoting ideas and information that value the consumer as well as the merchant.

If your internet marketing efforts are based on assumptions, you are doing it wrong.