By Tracy Mailloux | April 13, 2010
[In this guest post, Tracy Mailloux points out a trend in advertising he noticed while on his Great Education Adventure, and is kind enough to share some insight with us. Thanks, Tracy! ]
Interactive TV ad
Traditional TV isn’t dead… yet. It is, however, on a respirator, and the priest has been called in for last rites.
Digital TV, on the other hand, is very much alive. Although in it’s infancy, it is growing at a rapid pace–its steroid of choice: advertising.
Now I know what you are thinking, “there’s nothing new about advertising on TV.” True, advertising has been around ever since cavemen could sketch on rock walls. But with the digital revolution in TV, advertising is becoming more and more interactive and engaging, which is a new thing for ads.
Invention or Ad-vention?
“It’s about making the TV a more lean-forward medium than a strictly lean-back medium,” said Bob Ivins, vice president of research and data products with Comcast Corp.
Digital Cable and Satellite (DC&S) are employing advertising techniques conceived on the internet through your DVR. It first started about three or four years ago when DC&S started advertising on the menu screen or guide page on your digital service. For example, while searching for your favorite TV show, there is an advertising banner, usually at the bottom of the screen, prompting you to “click here,” for more information about a show, a product, a service, etc. DC&S collects a fee every time a viewer clicks on this feature.
When DC&S started this, many people were not happy with it at all. Many felt that it slowed down their DVR’s response time–just to linger an extra second so you might be captivated by the banner and decide to click on it. For me, that little banner isn’t a problem. I’ve never used it to request any information, but have used it to watch movie trailers. I actually think it’s a great advertising method that is capitalizing on a captive audience.
Ads within ads…
But I was taken back the other day when I noticed advertising within advertising. That’s right, advertising within advertising. Basically DC&S are now able to have “pop-up banners,” during commercial breaks. For example, let’s say you’re watching a commercial about Viagra. As the commercial plays, a pop-up (no pun intended) banner appears prompting you to “click here,” (using your remote) to receive a free trial pack. With that one click, your information–from DC&S–is transmitted instantaneously to a processing center that will fulfill your request.
“It allows us to combine the power of the Internet–with its engagement, targeting and accountability–with the power of the big screen,” said David Kline, Cablevision’s president of ad sales.
Being in the advertising business, all I can say is… wow, that is insane. On one hand, I think that it’s a great idea to be able to request information, coupons, free samples, enter sweepstakes, or have an agent contact me about a product that I am interested in as I sit in my pajamas while watching TV–very cool! This is the ultimate for advertisers: seeing exactly who their audience is, and build databases from that contact.
On the other hand, I do worry about what the next phase will be. Will advertising become too obtrusive while watching TV, as it can tend to be while surfing the internet? In addition, with my information being sent to companies and stored in their databases, who is to say that they won’t sell my information to third parties? Next thing you know, I am receiving more junk mail and spam calls.
So where’s it headed?
To be fair, the survival of DC&S depends on their ability to get creative with the way they execute ads for their advertisers. The reason and culprit for this is the fast-forward button. How many people skip commercials with their DVR’s fast-forward button? I know I do. Because of this, DC&S must implement interactive advertising channels. Now you can go to this interactive channel, say you see an ad for Walt Disney World, with one click of your remote, you can request for a travel agent contact you. Next thing you know, your telephone is ringing–it can be that fast.
“Using interactive techniques, we can get a targeted consumer to engage with a brand on TV for a much longer period of time than just a 30-second commercial,” said Jacqueline Corbelli, chief executive of media agency BrightLine iTV.
Kevin George, an ad executive at Unilever who oversaw one such campaign, said “the response was great” because it reached its targeted audience “without interrupting them,” in part because Unilever reached the audience “in a place where they’re comfortable, giving them the option to participate without interrupting them.”
In addition, due to the fast-forwarding of TV commercials, there are talks about having TV shows being sponsored again–much like they were back in the 1950′s. Be on the look out for these and more changes in the years to come.
When Digital TV started, they promised better picture and sound. But with the great potential now for much more data to be sent through your television, TV will become more and more interactive. Pretty soon, TV and your computer will be one and the same.
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About the authorTracy Mailloux is the former Director and Vice President of BBM Studios for RSA. He resigned his position in the Fall of 2009 and returned to school to pursue a second degree at Columbia College of Chicago. He coined the term Advention… well at least on this blog. When not delving into the creative world, you can find him wrestling alligators and playing with venomous snakes at Reptile Gardens (No Really). Find him on Linkedin.
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