What If??? Part 1
What if television ads could be targeted so that the ad would be seen regardless of what channel was being watched?This would break down the whole time-spot, program dependent ad buying environment! Instead of a program being targeted, the consumer is directly targeted.
posted by Andy Huckaba @ 11:40 AM
1 Comments:
While targeting individual viewers is obviously the way things are moving, I believe it is still important to match ad content to channel content. The reason is a TV is typically a 'community device' that is shared by more than one person. While you can target a household in this manner, it is difficult to determine who is on the other end without some type of a feedback system. As it stands, that feedback loop does not exist, and an advertiser can make it's best guess as to who is watching the TV by the type of program being watched. For an example, one wouldn't want to send an ad for a car to a TV set that is currently playing something off of Nickelodeon. Common sense would also dictate not sending an ad for feminine products to a TV set playing 'Spike TV' (a men's oriented network), even if a member of that household fits the criteria for that particular product.
A solution of a login system may be not too far down the road for televisions, but how to make it simple and easy to use needs further exploration. Let's say one sits down to watch TV, and later, another unique user joins them. Does the original person log out and re-log in as a group profile? I think not. It seems to be a challenge of interface - it needs to be intuitive and simple to use.
While the idea of targeting households is excellent, it's not to the precision it needs to be to make this kind of advertising as effective as possible, which is the ultimate goal. The point is, because of the nature of TV and the enviornment in which it sits, it's important to determine who's on the other side before the ad cannons go blazing.
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