The Equity Kicker - Latest Comments in More musings on the effectiveness and necessity of ads

Re: More musings on the effectiveness and necessity of ads

James V — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 10:13:32 -0000

Troy Young of UX Magazine (see www.uxmag.com) has a great definition of Media 2.0. People will suffer adverts if the content or service they are receiving is free. Paid content (like Sky Movies) should have no overt adverts, unless they can be discreetly embedded with product placement.

If enterprises can place adverts in cached memory inside a street level WiFi/WiMax transceiver, seamlessly deployed across populated areas, users can harvest local products and services on-demand from the nearest transmitter. A business can capture a customer requesting their products or services whilst harvesting that information from the nearest local transmitter right at the moment of interest. That ability to know someone nearby wants your business will pay for the transmitters to be deployed. These local cached memory transmitters can also power Out-Of-Home (OOH) TV advertising screens where “infotainment” videos of surfers, skiers and skydivers designed to catch the audience attention are interspersed with 15 second adverts for local or national enterprises. These OOH adverts can have wireless access point interactivity to allow users to get more information directly from the enterprise running the advert and capture the location specific customer at the moment of decision.

User profiles could also be pulled from their handheld devices in a specific location, at that moment in time and aggregated into a crowd demographic profile to allow OOH advertisers to broadcast adverts appropriate to the assembled audience (without compromising individual privacy laws). This unique knowledge of the aggregated crowd profile facilitates the revolution of publishing appropriate advertising only when a receptive audience has assembled.

On-line video games could also be provided for free on permission to receive “in game” interactive adverts appropriate to the user profile of the player. Eventually IPTV may also be broadcast by only transmitting the detail on the screen that has changed from the previous animation (like on-line electronic games), which may enable digital placement of in-program interactive adverts appropriate to the profile of the viewer.

The media world is being turned on its head as it pays advertisers to help deliver Web 2.0 services for free in return for targeted access to receptive consumers and this is Media 2.0.

People will come to accept the “fair exchange” of focussed and targeted advertising paying for digital city deployment and free delivery of some Web 2.0 services. If people don’t want adverts, they will be paying for the service.

Re: More musings on the effectiveness and necessity of ads

nic — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 08:17:58 -0000

thanks for the comments guys.

Paul - companies look to click through as a measure of engagement. Levels are low, say 2%, but people do have an idea of what they are getting. I guess what this shows these heatmaps show us that ads won't be generating much positive brand equity, above and beyond the clicks.

Re: More musings on the effectiveness and necessity of ads

alan p — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 07:09:06 -0000

Nic...I've tried to give a "general case" of my thinking over on my blog here

I've looked at this issue as a piece of game theory.

Re: More musings on the effectiveness and necessity of ads

Jon Smirl — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:36:28 -0000

Ads are extremely annoying when they aren't targeted correctly. For example I am being bombarded 5-10 times a day with ads for Geico, Progressive and eSurance. None of these products are sold in MA where I live. I have been hit with these ads so many times now that even if I move I won't buy their products.

Another annoying part of advertising is getting the same ad over and over after I have decided that I do not want the product or have already bought it.

Ads would be much more effective if advertising rates were raised 10x and the number of ads reduced 10x. Then track consumer behavior and try to increase the relevancy of the ads.

Re: More musings on the effectiveness and necessity of ads

paulsweeney — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:27:19 -0000

Nic, aren't people completely freaked out by the fact that the viewer is not even seeing the advertising impression, never mind making an active decision to engage? Perhaps the challenge has even moved past attention to engagement: now what would be the true metric of engagement? Just a thought (The Attention Trust?)