Here's something to make your blood run cold
16 May 2014
During TV ad breaks, platform sends 'companion ads' to second screens. Television advertisers, who know how we hate interruption advertising, and that we head for the loo, turn on the kettle; or simply PVR past the ads; now have a new strategy - they can "push" the ad content to your mobile phone during ad breaks!
According to a media release (not an ad) that dropped into my inbox, 'second screens' are a problem for television advertisers - while they're spending money flighting their ads during popular TV shows, audiences are largely using this time as an opportunity to check their phones or do something more interesting on their mobile devices.
Now a new platform pushes content from TV commercials into mobile advertising to "regain the attention of consumers".
Good news... you actually have to 'opt in', so to speak
Regain our attention! Don't they realise we are doing something else for a reason - we don't want to watch the ad!
Fortunately, to make it work you have to download an app. Then your phone or tablet will "use video identification technology" to "capture and analyse metadata about the TV ads on screen. Recognising them through their audio track, for example, the system then triggers companion content which displays as in-app ads. The triggered ads are able to run within two seconds of the start of the TV spot."
Apparently it "enables marketers to deliver consolidated content to audiences in a world where TV viewers are increasingly using more than one device at the same time."
'I'm off to the loo'
I'm reminded that years ago when we all started watching Dallas on Tuesday nights and I was still a journalist, we did a story about what happened to municipal water and electricity demand when there was an ad break. The level of the water reservoirs fell as we went to the loo or filled the kettle, and electricity usage spiked as the kettle boiled - so we have been ignoring interruption advertising for decades, it just gets easier and easier.
One of advertising's great folklore stories is attributed to John Wanamaker (1838 - 1922) the owner of a department store in Philadelphia. Wanamaker was a prodigious advertiser.
Someone asked him how he knew whether it worked. His answer: "Half of my advertising works and half of it doesn't. If I only knew which half."
We need less interruption advertising, not more!
About Peter Mann
Peter Mann is a founder of Meropa Communications (www.meropa.co.za) and has been CEO since 1989. He worked for most of South Africa's major newspapers as journalist for 15 years before that. He is a member of the South African Press Council appeals panel; and a trustee of literacy NGO READ. Tel +27 (0)11 506 7300, email az.oc.aporem@nnamretep, follow @petermann, and connect on LinkedIn.
