News Flash! The good old days of analog television are over. No longer is your TV a passive presence in your living room. It's on the move! Today's video is a powerful digital format that integrates with interactive Web applications, available at any time, in any location, over TV, PC, or mobile device. Broadcasters can now deliver news over the Web to travelers with localized advertising (see TitanCast.TitanTV), and viewers can now placeshift—that is, watch their home cable or TiVO from any broadband connection (see Slingbox).
The message for marketers in all of this? Get moving, too! Effective advertising must accommodate a whole new range of audience habits and schedules. As a result, demographics are the future of TV advertising. Some trendsetters:
- One company in New York, Visible World, has tackled this new frontier to great acclaim, allowing Kmart and others to deliver separate versions of the same TV ad spot to separate regional, age, or market segments.
- Check out Dove's user-generated advertising contest winner. The best user-created commercial was aired during the 2008 Academy Awards in a contest co-branded by Microsoft MSN.
Note that average citizens are definitely players in this new environment. Mom-and-pop video makers are selling ad time, and moving some of the $80 billion being spent on TV ads onto the Web.
The Point: Find your audience; don't wait for them to find you. 1950s-style mass television advertising is history. Welcome to the post-TiVO, IPTV, Internet video world.
Source: Howard Greenfield of Go Associates.
by Oliver Feakins
