What's to Come

Hitting The Mark

An interesting interview was part of an article in Mediapost's behavioral Insider newsletter named The Merging of TV and BT - by Phil Leggiere, Friday, February 24, 2006. You may need to sign up to view the article, but I believe it is free. In the article, Simmons Research Co-CEO Bill Engler is interviewed. He gives his views of targeting with an eye toward specific targeting on TV. Unfortunately, they're still talking about clusters and then media buys that concentrate on numbers.

Here's the problem I see with TV advertising. Even though the advertiser and their agency know the profile of their targeted audience, they end up buying ad time on programs that generally have audiences that are in that demographic. Problem is, it doesn't work too well because people that watch certain programs are by-in-large different. They may or may not have the same interests or buying habits. So the problem here has been with delivery system, not necessarily with advertisers not knowing their target. Enter... A Digital Age, where communication becomes two-way on electronic devices. The lead and where much of the learning has been is the Internet, but reaching a targeted audience still is not great in that media. Now we see a move to digital television, digital mobile devices with higher bandwidth and the opportunity for marketers to send a specific message to a specific device is technically possible. Two-way pipes have been created that enable interaction at a personal level.

So we have a system where over $60 billion is spent annually on TV advertising. This system includes a tremendous amount of waste right now. Lots of players are involved in creating, targeting, measuring, setting rates, buying and delivering. Being able to target specifically to an individual may require dramatically less numbers because theoretically the response rate will be much higher on a well targeted ad. Couple with that an industry where we have an explosion of choices and increased control for the consumer. All of the sudden, a 7 p.m. Monday night spot is no longer valid because the consumer can watch that program at any time with video-on-demand or digital recorders(DVRs). So the target has to become the individual not the time-day part or program. I predict this is where it's moving and the technology is catching up to provide ads that are most relevant to me.


Chime in! Let me know what you're thinking, what you're hearing and how you feel about this personalization of advertising.

-Andy

posted by Andy Huckaba @ 5:10 PM