Captive Audience Advertising - Television 2.0
Last week’s DSE was many things to many people, but to me, it was all about what works — and what doesn’t — in the advertising arena. Many of us learned more about dealing with advertising agencies and the conundrum of making agencies understand why digital advertising is an important component to campaigns. I also received a pretty good education on how and why agencies work the way they do, and how we, as an industry, are responsible for not only convincing agencies on why digital advertising is valuable, but making it as easy (and non-threatening) as possible.
That being said, I find it easier to approach agencies with something they are already familiar with — true television advertising. True television advertising (pre-TIVO and 100 channels to choose from) was based upon (whether anyone knew it or not) a captive audience model. Viewers would watch their television program and really have no choice but to watch the accompanying commercials. This, I believe, is the golden egg to agencies — how can they “force” a demographic to watch their ads?
Today’s captive audience networks are like Television 2.0 — networks that are designed to entertain and inform clients in any type of environment that involves waiting.
And although this model still faces the same challenges as other digital advertising models, we’ve had success in presenting this to agencies because, number one, it’s something they are familiar with, and number two, it gives them more confidence that the advertisements will actually be watched.
As far as creating our own box, we’ve created a value-added component that encourages advertisers not just to “sell” their products on our system, but to educate — giving consumers a reason why they need that particular product or service. For certain campaigns, instead of going for the traditional :30 spot, we offer longer spots so that advertisers can tell their story. So, most of our advertisements run for approximately 2:00, but in an informative, educating manner — a story.
Now, of course, this leads to a longer loop, and therefore a need for fresh and constant content, but that’s another blog.
Using a model agencies are familiar with and combining this with a value-add (longer ads with no additional cost) is definitely one step in the right direction. Let’s not bang agencies over the head with a concept that doesn’t quite yet fit into their world, let’s make it almost impossible for them NOT to allocate some budget money into digital. Baby-steps, but none-the-less, progress.
2 years ago • 0 notes