I had an interesting discussion last night about a previous post I wrote on wasted marketing. This friend of mine suggested a different way for broadcasting TV ads: make the viewer choose them.
I think there are two main aspects to consider: the infrastructure and the model per se. The first one looks like it is going to be solved soon. Apparently giving viewers the option to choose would be possible if the TV station is broadcasting digitally, and it appears the the EU legislation specifies that by the end of the decade all TV stations should broadcast digitally. Thus the technical problem is overcome.
The model leaves from the assumption that the viewer will make an ad category ranking. Consequently he may choose his preferences from a list of ad categories (i.e. alchohol, detergents, sport equipment, etc), and the TV station will accordingly direct the ad stream to the TV box the request came from. Why would a viewer do that? He won't, he will be forced, and this is where I think the model has sensitive areas. Perhaps giving him some sort of incentive may be a solution.
Consequently, the advertiser will have a better knowledge of the consumers' preferences, thus reducing the probability of wasted marketing. At the same time, this will give broadcasters more power of negotiation as this seems to be a good context for them to auction the spots for certain events. Example: a beer producer interested in getting the commercial breaks during a sport event will bet as high as possible to be the only advertiser -- perhaps the way Google sells out ads is quite appropriate.
It seems an interesting idea and I think that if some of the underlying assumptions are worked out, it may become quite lucrative.
Research has been done on personalized TV advertising and what they had discovered is the persons involved in the study were offended by its intrusiveness. They felt it was an invasion of their privacy. The subjects compared this technique with telemarketing, which is the public enemy number one in marketing here in the US (more then 55M people registered in the Do Not Call Registry http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2004/02/dncstats0204.htm ) This is why the Direct Mail and Direct E-Mail is still working � it delivers a personalized message without offending the target. Of course there are big variations in responses between different age groups. Privacy is not as big an issue for Gen Xs as it is for Baby Boomers. The test was not successful in the 90's but I expect personalized TV advertising to be slowly introduced in 5-10 years. Like Philip Kotler says, marketing is all about the comfort zones� But the comfort zones change with time, so the future might as well look as depicted in the Spielberg�s Minority Report� Marius
I agree with the intrusiveness. However, I think that there may be a way to somehow make the consumer prioritize on the advertising he is supposed to see. Of course, one way of putting it would be that he is not interested at all in using it, hence ranking is useless. This where the incentive plan should work. I was actually thinking at how Google uses its AdSense program nowadays. Once the digital TV permits interaction programs such as AdSense may be quite easily applicable. But this implies making the customer behaving in different ways about advertising than he�d done it before. But if it worked for internet why not for the TV stations? It�s just food for thought; I guess that ultimately the more you personalize your marketing message the more likely is to reduce wasted marketing. And this comes from knowing very well your clients.