Convergence and the Future of Advertising

[Robert]

New article up at Search Engine Guide:

All Roads Lead Online: Convergence and the Future of Advertising

Snippet:
As media converge online, the distinctions between various forms of advertising will disappear. Branding and direct, electronic and print, it will all become part of one seamless marketing continuum online.

[StupidScript]

It's always interesting to read a compendium of popular thought, and this article is no different. It's interesting.

I would like to see authors promoting more user-controlled scenarios, however, instead of advertiser-controlled scenarios.

Toward this end, I would like to suggest that the development of the "super tools" to become available to users and advertisers always contain a user-controlled advertising "switch".

When I'm watching a program about Hawaii, it doesn't mean I mean to go to Hawaii any time soon, and in that light, ads related to that activity would be unwelcome.

I would like to have a "switch" I could activate that tells the advertisers "I'm looking for suggestions ... please send relevant ads". When that "switch" is set to "off" ... I don't need no stinking ads.

On a side note, Mr. Hotchkiss uses much of the article to describe "features" that have been available with WebTV and its predecessors for many years. He is right in that new technology cannot be "pushed out", but must be "accepted in" by the public. When they had the chance to purchase that dress Dianne Ladd was wearing, WebTV users chose not to in years past. Such a "feature" would only be included in future versions when the public indicates that they respond to those types of opportunities.

Addressing that issue, people don't like it when you mess with their TV-watching. TiVO, DVRs and the like are being used because people don't want ANY ads, among other reasons. The idea that TiVO would begin placing "overlay" ads on the screen when users fast forward through commercials is not being met very well ... and I've seen several solutions for eliminating even these proposed, fly-by ads.

When someone is searching the Internet, they are being active.
When someone is watching television, they are being passive.
The Internet is for enhancing reality.
The television is for providing an escape from reality.

Time will tell, but IMHO ... escaping from reality means no ads, no thinking, no activity ... just entertainment. It will be a tough sell to re-model the television experience into an Internet-type experience, even with all of the cool gadgets that will undoubtedly be coming down the pike.

There will be a convergence, but IMHO it will remain largely separated by function for many many years to come.

[StupidScript]

I remember back in '78 when my older brother got the newfangled "cable" pumped into his little 13" black-and-white SONY t.v.

I spent the weekend at his apartment glued to the screen as MTV played video after video and HBO presented movie after movie ... all without commercial interruption.

How could they afford to do this?

Subscribers.

The early cable programming used a business model that depended on a subscriber base to meet its financial objectives. This is a humongous difference from the current business climate that dictates wringing maximum profit out of an enterprise before pimping it out and selling or dumping it.

I'm going to start a poll re: what the heck are we teaching our children?

From the perspective of a global economy ... one in which people will soon challenge rats as the highest mammalian population on the planet ... does it really make sense to build a business using the "wring-out" model when the more customer-oriented subscriber model would provide a more wholesome (literally), long-term corporate profile?

One says: Mo' money.

I say: Peace, love, and your beads.