Wednesday, September 19, 2007

The Ads Will Become The Content

What is the future of online advertising?

Web Visitors hate online advertising and I don’t blame them. How can anyone welcome the constant interruptions of pop ups, banner ads and spam? If we didn’t hate them then we wouldn’t have things like pop up blockers or spam filters. Advertising has always been disruptive in every medium, and that is what’s holding back advertisings potential.

Consumers are more intelligent now than they ever have been before, over time they have become desensitized to ads and easily ignore them no matter what advertisers try to do. The more in your face an ad is the more annoyed today’s consumer becomes. So the Advertiser’s dilemma is, how to get the consumer to notice the ad?

To solve that conundrum we must first realize that the consumer is seeking content. Once advertisers understand that consumers are devouring content more than ads, the next logical step is for the ad to become the content. Some savvy advertisers have already realized this and have cleverly created content specific for consumers. This is why BMW has a specialty magazine for BMW owners.

In this instance the web is lagging behind print. But today Google may have changed that. Google’s new Gadget Ad format will distribute ads that look and act like mini-Web sites. These new ad formats can include videos, games, news, images, etc.

Does this mean web visitors will be able to have a deeper engagement with advertising without disrupting their experience on the site they were visiting? Maybe, maybe not.

What this does mean is that since Google is behind it the new content driven ads that are interactive will be relevant to the content the user is interested in based on the page they are browsing and that can only mean more successful advertising online.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Now that the CEO of Disney has recognised piracy as a business model to take note of, instead of ignoring it, combined with the future of TV/IPTV/webTV etc debate, the future of advertising (a merger of multiple distribution mediums) will definitely have to act.

I agree, and you're absolutely right, web users hate advertising (5-10 seconds exp. max) -- and in the future, advertisements will be so embedded in to online content/media/TV/films, that brands will become associated with the content. Extreme product placement.

This will become a recognised business model, helping to finance the creation of content, ads embedded forever, that not even 'pirate platforms' can strip out. The tables will definitely turn -- changing how content is financed and produced across every platform.

Watch this space, so they say.