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What’s the future of advertising?
Wednesday, 19 March 2008 — by Wayne Smallman
In many respects, the future of advertising lies on the Internet. However, despite much the same audience being present as in print, TV and radio, the rules are very different…
The irony is, as a medium, the Internet offers almost self-organizing demographics, whereby distinct groups of people can be readily found aggregating around certain types of forums, websites, ‘blogs, social networks et cetera.
But the perception of advertising on the Internet is that people feel they’re being intruded upon. Lazy, cheap and often haphazard / irrelevant adverts don’t help matters.
And therein lies the challenge to advertisers — how do they become less annoying but still make a profit?
I’m certainly no expert in advertising, but because advertising is so reliant on our emotions, I find advertising a fascinating subject.
Advertising — new avenues for revenue?
Take for example a recent Rugby Union game on TV which featured a very unusual take on advertising. Rather than appealing to the emotions, Paddy Power probed our curiosity, which is powerful stuff, when it works.
More recently, the worlds of the wide web and of advertising have come together in unexpected ways; embedded adverts in PDF files, experimenting with “in video” advertising, as well as “in-game” advertising to name but three examples.
I’ve given some thought to the future of advertising before, from the point of view of a very simple yet highly nuanced question: will advertising ever not be annoying?
It’s a strange sort of question, but a recent article outlining the best kinds of advertising drew a comment out of me:
“Is there not an argument for adverts that aren’t interrupting or annoying?
If we accept that demographic profiling is to become more accurate and that our individual needs better known, then the specificity of advertising might mean that with media channels of the near future, we’re only getting the stuff that we want.
So in that sense, advertising becomes exceptionally targeted. It’s worth looking into APML as an example of how we can now manage and share our likes & dislikes.
Think in terms of targeted advertising interwoven with DVR technology and interactive TV, so that when we see something, like maybe a guy wearing a T-shirt we like the look of, we pause play, click the T-shirt and create a sale tag that we can come back to and buy later…”
Which is a summary — or maybe a distillation — of the ideas I’ve had about the future of advertising.
Much has been said about convergence in technology. How we all like to imagine our favourite gadgets merged into one. Or plucking disparate technology trends out of thin air, hoping to marry them in some way, to create a better whole.
But what is technology, anyway?
Perhaps the greatest convergent technology will be the one that sees TV, radio, video playback merge with the web, creating a super media service, one that takes the strengths of its constituent parts while doing away with their weaknesses.
Advertising has been around for an exceptionally long time, in one form or another. As new mediums emerge, it’s the job of the entrepreneurial advertiser to populate that new medium with must-have offers and eye-catching deals.
It’s easy to say that the Internet is the future of advertising. The same must have been said of television and then the radio before it.
But as a medium, the Internet will pull together those other venues to create something so vast that advertising will be thrust into the heart of this super medium itself.
Maybe in the not too distant future, many of the things we do on the will be free?
Instead, the past, present and the future of the Internet, TV and radio are reliant on the continued successes of advertising, whatever shape or form they may be…
Recommended reading
- Will advertising ever not be annoying?
- Turning the advertising game on its head!
- Ad’ blindness coming to a PDF near you!
- Audi, Jaguar ads drive business branding
- YouTube InVideo ads tech a turn off?
- In-game music, adverts for video games
- Just what is technology?
- Will advertising ever not be annoying?
- Will everything on the web one day be free?
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i think a new form of advertising could go hand in hand with RFID, where the RFID tag would contain certain information about location, age, sex, likes, dislikes, and then could be linked with any advertising medium to display the most relevant ads that are specifically targeted at that one person. everyone has different likes and dislikes, even within the same small group.
My problem with in-game advertising is that advertising is supposed to help cover the costs of development, but they still charge the same amount to buy the game. so where’s the money going form the advertising? other than the obvious place (the pockets of the CEOs)