[opendtv] Re: Google is now out of the radio ad business

At 7:16 PM -0500 2/14/09, Albert Manfredi wrote:
The problem with this logic is that we are talking about two different types of media, and both of them have their place. (This has been a long recurring topic.)
If you are browsing the web, you MIGHT be convinced to go off on a tangent to pursue some on-line ad shoved in your face. Maybe, depending how busy you are. Why? Because you are ALREADY involved in interacting with the medium you're using.
If you are watching a TV show, listening to the radio while driving a car, listening to the radio while doing your chores or while eating lunch, or sitting in a movie theater waiting for the show to start, you are hardly likely to stop what you're doing to do a lot of interactive stuff with someone selling his product. At best, you will try to remember what the ad said, and make a mental note to check it out later.
I agree that when we are being entertained it is far less likely that we will leave that entertainment experience and go off on a tangent. In this respect, ANY TV ad is a tangent. In the theater you are held hostage to what they want to show you, including the ads. Unfortunately TV has depended on much the same approach - i.e. "Free TV" interrupts the entertainment experience and takes you off on an advertising tangent.
Now, more than ever, people are actively trying to avoid ads, and becoming increasingly irritated when ads are forced upon them. We avoid ads by paying for entertainment without them. We avoid ads by pre-recording the shows then skipping the ads - as I did last night while catching up on the last two episodes of 24. And we avoid ads by going on tangents - to the bathroom or refrigerator - when they are forced upon us.
We also have become accustomed to having a TV on as background noise and/or to monitor a channel for information we are interested in. Typically this is not associated with "entertainment," but rather information channels like news, weather, etc.
But we are a nation of consumers of advertising and product information. We depend on ads and now the Internet to learn about products and make our buying decisions.
It is this last reality that I was talking about. The Internet provides a FAR superior experience for both the advertisers/manufacturers of a product and for the consumers of these products. It can also badly tarnish a company if their product sucks - MS Vista is a good example.
This probably had much to do with the rise of TV and the demise of print and more traditional advertising vehicles, and now the decline of TV.
Yes Bert TV is in decline, despite what Nielsen says about our viewing habits. If this were not true, why are we seeing so many broadcasters and media companies losing money, laying off employees and now moving into Chapter 11 to deal with the fact that the investment community views TV as a business in decline. 


So clearly, ads have to be tailored to the medium they are being played on.
If the advertizers are still so dropped-jaw-fascinated with the Internet that they ignore other viable media that people do continue to use, the only logical conclusion I can come to is that this too will pass. They will wise up eventually.
Companies have an arsenal of marketing tools at their disposal, of which advertising in one. Advertising will never go away - but it will evolve to deal with modern realities. The Internet provides an excellent vehicle to make product information available to the masses. Advertising is evolving to make it easier for people to connect to that information. This is a major reason that a very high percentage of ads include a URL.
You talked bout going back and viewing ads or product info after an entertainment experience. One good way to do this is to literally have your TV bookmark all of those URLs in the ads so that you can easily go back and find out more about something you saw while being entertained. This may ALSO include product placements within the entertainment experience.
I can tell you that for me, in no way are Internet ads more successful than other types.
If you are talking abot banner ads and first screen ads I agree completely - they are interrupting an interactive experience just as surely as a video ad interrupts an entertainment experience.
But you do not turn to your TV to seek out information about products - you DO use web browsers to connect to this information. Advertisers measure ad effectiveness in two basic ways: 

Impressions - the number of people to which the ad was presented.

Responses - the number of people who actually acted upon the ad.
In direct mail advertising a few percent is a VERY GOOD response rate. Specialty magazine ads are typically measured by the number of people who request information via the "bingo cards" that are provided to request more information. And increasingly, web hits can be linked back to the ads that caused the person to go to a website for more information.
True, people hang on to their cars longer. On the other hand, I'd be mighty surprised if people aren't equally sick of annoying web ads that block your view of what you're trying to see.
People are sick of intrusive ads EVERYWHERE. Unfortunately, it does about as much good as growing sick of bigger more intrusive government in our lives.
This economic downturn is caused by consumers behaving perhaps a little too much as they always should have been behaving. Or rather, becoming responsible too suddenly. It's a big shock to the economy when people actually decide to save a tiny amount of their income, for a change. 

Sadly, the party is almost over. Rome is burning.
They'll tire of this new fad, as they tire of all other fads. It's a crying shame that so many people are put out of work in the process. 

What fad are you talking about? I hope you mean socialism...

Regards
Craig


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