This has all been done before, in fact, every year it's done during the Super Bowl. Ads so good, so relevant, or just so funny that they become part of the content you are consuming.
As the economy shrinks and advertising continues to move into measured media (online) and web-based businesses continue to depend more and more on advertising to finance their applications, publications or third-party content, that's where I think advertising will continue to trend.
Whether its companies that can scrape your facebook profile and serve you ads about the movies, music and books you care about in a form or format that actually engages and entertains you, or companies that allow you to provide your preferences up front about what types of ads you want to see and where and when you prefer to be advertised to, or even whole markup languages that store your preferences and make them available to advertisers on the fly around the web (is this scary or just really helpful?) I think we will continue to see a deeper convergence of advertising and content.
Some prominent recent examples?
- Scarlet, the new LG campaign for its series of tvs (not tv series)
- The Will Ferrell-Jackie Moon commercials which cross-promoted a movie, a beer and under-arm deodorant all in the context of an SNL-like skit
- Every facebook, myspace and social networking widget
This convergence also happens to tie in with Chris Larsen's declaration last month that the future of everything is free - if that's true, then advertising is going to have to be inserted into a lot more places a lot more often, and if I'm going to accept that as a user and not turn off my tv, unplug my pc or turn off my radio and go outside to throw a Frisbee, than that advertising is going to have to continue to become much, much more relevant to me.
It doesn't make any sense that as a regular facebook user I often get served ads in the left margin that have zero relevance to my profile info.
That's a pathetic commercial use of the very personal (and very valuable) information I've handed over. They could be serving me clips of Chevy Chase movies, links to Pearl Jam music, ads for surf boards, golf clubs or travel info - all of which I've told advertisers I'm passionate via facebook and my other socnet apps, and all of which i have a much higher chance of clicking on than ads for "hair loss reversal" or "30+ singles."
Alas, people are figuring this all out - and my thoughts of seamless personal and contextual advertising around the web are not that far off in the future - I just wonder which companies will be the ones who pull it off?
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