Chose Your Own Adventure (or Video Ads)
Watching videos on MSNBC lately? Maybe you've seen this screen that lets you actually choose which advertisements you watch. Rather than interrupting your videos with a commercial for something you really don't care about, now you can select the ad that you feel is perhaps most relevant. They acknowledge that they have to show ads - but, allow the viewer to choose. My only complaint, not enough ads to make this interesting - pretty much the same three options over and over again. What if they did this on TV?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I really like this idea for online video. I don't know if it would work well for TV though, because one of 2 things happen: you either have to pick up the remote and pick an ad to watch (annoying for the viewer), or you get up to get a drink from the fridge and the ad times out (annoying to the advertiser).
ReplyDeleteThat is the scenario in a real-time viewing session, but how do you think it would work in a tivo situation? Would you only be able to fast forward through the actual show, and when you reach a commercial break you make your choice?
This is a nice half-step above traditional advertising, but I think the future is in intelligent ads. Either you will actively "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" ads to shape which ads you see in the future, or they will somehow already have your demographics, shopping patterns, etc in the system and your preferred ads will automatically be chosen for you.
Agree about the annoyance factor for the viewer - but what if it wasn't so many ads. Most commercials are completely wasted on most people. So if there was one or two per 30 minute show, that were super relevant and I almost 'wanted' to watch them - then that might be something.
ReplyDeleteTivo situation...yeah...I don't want to have to watch a commercial then because I've paid for the service...agreed though, this is a valid question.
But, as I said, most ads are wasted on most of the people. And for the price to advertisers this is pretty poor value, and for the time required by viewers, same story. There has to be a better way.