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  • Oct
    30
    The Future of TV Advertising.
    by mike at 3:40pm

    Currently, The Death of the 30 second spot.

    So way back in the day, Advertisers pretty much owned the TV airwaves,  the 1.0 version of TV Advertising had brands sponsoring and even producing and programming the shows that aired on the networks, the networks were essentially “dumb pipes” carrying the advertisers programming. Then  came the great Quiz show scandals of the late 50s which changed the arbiters of on-air programming from the advertisers into the hands of the networks themselves. Of course nothing in life is free, the networks needed to get paid and so was born the 30 second spot on TV – TV Advertising 2.0.

    And its been great right?  Outside of a slight bump wth the advent of the remote controI  (changing channels without getting up!  Argh!) and an initial fear of the VCR, this medium this had pretty much a 40 year run with no problem.  Advertisers would churn out these little spots, and the masses would sit on their couch and consume and all was well.

    But in the late 90s a company called Teleworld Inc. was formed and they created a new home media device called the “TiVO”.   This box had a strange history – it wasn’t understood by those who didn’t own one, and absolutely adored by anyone who did.  Suddenly more astute advertisers began to worry a bit about their precious television ad spend.  People with these new Digital Video Recorders (DVR – sometimes “Personal” Video Recorder) were able to record shows, play them back and skip the ads!   Heck future versions would even include the ability to skip in 30 second chunks to make it a bit easier.  Despite the popularity with their owners fortunately these devices have been fairly slow to catch on, but now,virtually every new set top box going out to consumers has a built in DVR – and these are getting out quick as more people want to take advantage of their shiny new HD TV.   Combine the growing uptake of DVRs, the new ruling on Network DVR’s and the rise of On Demand programming and you begin to get into areas where the 30 second spot starts to become severely threatened.  Yikes! What to do?  Where should advertisers send their dollars?

    The Addressable Ad, The Canoe And You.

    While the ad unit would stay the same, the effectiveness could be multiplied if, say, the ads you saw (or tried to skip through) were more tailored towards our tastes right?  Well in the U.S. this ability isn’t far off. Already many cable operators are looking at ways to implement addressable ads across their networks.   Technically its not terribly hard, the biggest issue is primarily a bandwidth concern – you have to pump multiple ad spots in the same broadcast bandwidth.   But this concern is being addressed as cable companies begin deployments of Switched Video.    Now all they need is to know what the Set Top Box’s users watch and suddenly you have a pretty good profile of which ads may be most effective BAM! Tailored TV Advertising.   The thing is though, to really get an effective ad buy across a single demographic you need to purchase spots across all the cable networks, this means you need some sort of cooperation between the cable networks.

    Getting all the cable companies’s paddling in the same direction is the goal of the Canoe Project.  The Canoe project is a cross cable company initiative that should allow advertisers to buy ads from multiple cable networks from a single point of contact.  (If you want I have a quick primer on Cable Advertising).   The Canoe project has a few goals but one  is to expand the reach of cable advertising.  Even without addressable ads the Canoe project will allow advertisers to get increased value by targetting ads by geographic demographic across the different cable comapnies.   Or in laymans terms they can say I want this Ford Flex ad to go to affulent urban areas and this Ford F150 ad to go to the hicks in the sticks.  With the increased targetting of ads the job of the media buyer is going to get a whole lot more complicated.  Something Google may be looking to address (Sheer speculation here – but I know they have some designs on STB software).   The Canoe project has two other goals however as well.    The first is to implement systems to deal with addressable ads.  The second is to make the ads enhanced.

    Enhanced Ads And The Forward Lean.

    One of the biggest drivers of ETV and interactive television in general is the ability to add value to the traditional 30 second spot by actively engaging the user – getting them leaning forward from the couch and making a traditionally passive experience into something more engaging.  While the possibilities will become vast there are a couple of primary types of enhanced ads that are being pushed by CableLabs and Canoe.

    Request For Information (RFI)

    RFI ads are one of the more ubiquitous forms of enhanced advertising.  It allows the user to request additional materials to be mailed or emailed to the user.  Some of the cooler more advanced versions can also tie into a Digital Voice offering or something like Jajah to set up a call with a customer service rep.

    Telescoping Ads

    Telescoping here means ads that take you away from your linear programming (telescoping into the content).   There are essentially two flavors here, the first type simply telescopes into a VOD offering.   In this scenario the viewer can be watching an ad for the new Batman movie and then choose to view the trailer on demand.   The more advanced version would telescope into a more robust interactive offering (sometimes called a “microsite”) which in some cases may just be an enhanced VOD stream.   This way the user could click into a microsite for Dominos an instantly be able to order a pizza, or into a CBS branded space with links to VOD previews of other shows. The hardest part of enhancing ads is adding interactivity to a 30 second window in time, which is why telescoping units are the most attractive.

    The Future or “How can I buy Lauren’s cute shirt?”

    While enhancing and addressing ads can both make them more relevant and more engaging,  neither directly address ad skipping.  The real solution to this will end up being some form of in show advertising.   The next generation is already becoming the age of multitaskers, and they’re going to want more and more out of their television experience.   Adding an interactive layer is really the next innovation that will happen to television shows, enhanced overlays and telescoping will really add new ways for advertisers to attract users from within the shows themselves – timeshifting be damned!  Even with relatively basic interactivity this kind of in-show interaction can add new methods for increasing brand reach.   This could be enhaced by tieing the interactivity directly to the show content as well.  Imagine a popup during “The Hills” that says “want to know what Lauren got her shirt?  Click Here”.  This could lead to an advertising spot or even the ability to purchase the product directly.

    Similarly shows like Heros and Sweden’s The Truth About Marika, are turning regular television viewing into an immersive interactive experience.   For those who wish, they provide the opportunity for users to actually interact with the show on the web – with additional content and plot development going on outside of the normal television confines.  The Truth About Marika even took this a step further by creating an entire alternate reality game where users could actually get up and out and experience the content outside in the real world.   These types of fully interactive experiences are most likely the future of all types of content, and advertising in this new immersive medium will span interactive applications and viral media to a wholly ground up interactive experience – ads included.