With the concept of ‘fluid formats’ where consumers / viewers are setting their own viewing schedules for TV programming through the use of Personal Video Recorders (PVRs) like Tivo and Sky+, advertisers have been worried for a while.
For a long time, we’ve held the attitude at Conchango that to get the attention of viewers is not hard, but to get their attention and put them in a receptive state of mind to the advertising messaging is the real trick.
Disruptive / Interruptive advertising is something that gets in your way. And generally consumers hate it, unless the creative is so jaw-dropping that you can’t help being amused or enthralled by it.
In online advertising, the techniques got bolder and bolder, with full page take-overs to ensure that an ad was seen.
In online video, pre-roll is still the favoured format, with customers having to sit through an ad before their chosen content appears.
And if the paradigm is seen to be the ‘norm’ then consumers don’t seem to mind. So none of us really mind too much when a film breaks at a critical point for ads, and it’s our choice as to whether we sit there or head off for a cup of tea.
However, it’s currently a cat and mouse game. The consumer is finding ways to skip through this stuff, so advertisers are trying to hit back and find ways to force the message in front of them.
I once bribed a colleague of mine to leave out an idea for a broadcaster. The idea was that when watching online streaming video, the stream would pause halfway through an ad break. Meaning, that when you came in having got your cup of tea, at least half of the ads were still waiting to be viewed, and you couldn’t ignore them or fast forward them.
I thought this idea was so disruptive that it would just cause annoyance and bad feeling, with consumers ‘putting up with it’ rather than it being a good part of their experience.
But today, as Elliott Reuben pointed out to me (read his blog on a similar topic), a company called Keystream went a step further. They have found a way to find blank areas (like large pieces of white space) in the video stream, and to then place an overlay advert in that space. More here.
People like good advertising (just search ‘advert’ on YouTube). They also like advertising that is relevant. But they like it to come at a time when they are ready for it and are in a frame of mind to respond to it.
So two thoughts that we had were as follows:
Thought 1: Save for later. This is a thought that we showed at the International Broadcasters Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam earlier this month. I don’t know about you, but I know at least one person who clips advertising from their newspaper. Ads that trigger a thought, or satisfy a need. They clip them, stick them to the fridge and deal with them when they have the time. Why not do this with interruptive advertising? The Keystream offering suggests that people will go off to an advertiser’s website during a show. Well, no they won’t… unless of course they can pause what they were watching, or keep watching it. So why not have a response mechanism that is ‘save for later’. Then they just click that, the overlay disappears, and then at an appropriate time, or in another medium e.g. their RSS reader, their browser home page, etc. they will see the ad. When they do eventually see the ad, they’ll be much more able and willing to respond to it.
This applies to any online or TV advertising. What are the chances of me wanting to take the time to respond to an ad when I’m in the middle of another task – whether it’s catching up on celeb gossip on MSN, or watching Heroes?! So why not get me to decide when is a good time? When you do eventually get to talk to me, you know I’m a much more likely candidate to convert...
At IBC, we showed a system that allows advertisers to tag content with relevant keywords at an appropriate point in the timeline. This drives an ‘ad stream’ that shows small overlay ads relevant to the content. We used a clip from The Devil Wears Prada, so there was lots of opportunity to advertise the shoes and clothing shown on screen. But we also allowed users to ‘save for later’ so that they weren’t having to move away from the film, even though they really did want to know where to get that exact pair of shoes… The people we showed it to responded very well to it.
This was part of the Online Video Publishing Platform (OVPP) that we worked on in collaboration with Microsoft. There’s a white paper and public demo due out soon.
Thought 2: Why not allow consumers to choose the ads they watch? During a show, you place small, unobtrusive overlays in a fixed area on the screen. These are brands for which you could see ads during the next break. If you don’t choose any, then we’ll just show you the default reel. But if you select a few, then we’ll show you those.
Now, put yourself in the shoes of the advertiser. How much more valuable is someone who has said “I want to watch your ad”? They are open, receptive and much more likely to do what I want them to do.
Whereas, if I click ‘ignore’, I’m very unlikely to be of any value to you. No matter how many times you put your ad for double glazing in front of me, I’m simply never going to be interested. You are wasting your time and money trying.
Automated ad serving systems would ensure that advertisers who wanted to enforce say 100,000 views could still do so, using the default ads, and interspersing the odd forced ad in amongst the self-selected ones.
So for advertisers it’s good – they get a much better ROI on the ads that do get seen.
For broadcasters it’s good for two reasons: They get to charge more the self-selected ad slots.
The second reason it’s good for broadcasters is the same reason it’s good for viewers: The ads they see are always relevant, and are much less disruptive than other broadcasters.
So come on chaps… get with it. Give us the ads we want, at a time we want them. Then you don’t have to ram your brand down our throats. It’s not like we don’t already have the technology…