The Future of TV Ad Effectiveness
The effectiveness of television advertising has been placed under scrutiny lately as clients demand their agencies deliver more concrete results in order to help justify advertising budgets. Over the years, the television viewing audience has become more fragmented; there are over 500 cable channels and more than 30 million households have DVRs with the ability to skip advertisements. Clients want to make sure that the consumers they want to reach are actually watching the ads they paid to place. This week, a number of cable companies joined together to announce plans to launch a new interactive television advertising platform. The new platform, referred to as “addressable” advertising, allows advertisers new and exciting targeting opportunities while producing more measureable results.
Comcast Corp., Cox Communications Inc, Time Warner Cable Inc, Charter Communications Inc, Cablevision Systems Corp. and Bright House Networks have joined together to form Canoe Ventures. According to Canoe, the cable companies are going to give advertisers the ability to target certain consumers based on demographics including age, income and community profile. So households in affluent markets might see advertisements for the new Mercedes SUV. Currently advertisers are only allowed to target an entire metropolitan area or town. The shrinking of segments based on demographics will allow advertisers to develop a more targeted media approach, but that is just the start.
The second part of Canoe’s plans involves the development of interactive-TV advertising. Interactive-TV advertising allows consumers the ability to click a commercial for more information. The technology has already been developed and improved upon over the past couple of years. In August of 2007, Nike teamed up with Dish Network to launch an interactive-TV campaign targeted to Dish Networks 13 million DVR subscribers. If consumers clicked a button on their remote while the ad was playing, they were taken to a video-on-demand channel where they could view exclusive Nike content. The technology already exists to produce interactive-TV advertisements; now it is not just a matter of working with all the cable companies to produce a standard advertising system.
One big advantage of interactive-TV commercials is the ability to click on the advertisement. Advertisers who produce interactive-TV ads will be able to see exactly who is clicking on their commercials. They can view the average response rate. They will know the geographic regions where their ads resonated, the income level of people clicking on their ads and more. Finally, the medium will be able to produce stronger, more tangible evidence as to effectiveness of the medium. There are still even bigger plans.
The company hopes to one day actually target by specific ZIP code and then move to targeting the actual individual households. When this will take place is yet to be determined as the technology is yet to be developed, however, let’s imagine what you could do with this technology. Let’s say this weekend you are watching the Masters tournament (golf). While you are watching Tiger Woods strive to become the champion again, imagine seeing a commercial during the broadcast saying, click here to purchase Tiger’s Masters clothing. Upon a click with your remote you would be transported to a screen where you are able to select you size and click purchase. As technology improves expect your television to behave more and more like your computer and eventually battle each other over who’s more effective.
Tags: Advertising, Interactive TV, Marketing, TV Ads
