Requiem mass (media)
By David MacGregor,
TV ads are mostly waste. That’s about to change
[Advertising]
‘Margin’ is a deliciously ambiguous term. Its meaning depends on context. In accounting, the profit margin is net income divided by revenue. To be marginalised is to be on the edge of society. A marginal gain is one that is incremental. The margin of a page is the space between the words and where the paper ends. The unifying thought is that of difference. One can win by an unassailable margin: the difference between victor and vanquished.
The margins are where exciting things can happen. If the text is what is ‘known’, then the space around invites additional thought. When user interface researchers studied annotation of texts, the marginalia, they found that in several university departments knowledgeable students would scour piles of second-hand texts for those consistently annotated. The students valued the distillation of knowledge by the prior user.
The rise of blogging is an example of marginalia. Englishcut.com is not a definitive text on how to be a Savile Row tailor, but it is probably the most widely-read material (if you will pardon the pun) on the subject in the world.
Video sharing is another example of activity on the margins. YouTube and Google Video offer a venue for some of the most marginal people on the planet to reach sometimes phenomenal audiences. Geriatric1927 has become something of a phenomenon—at nearly 80 years old, over two million views of his first attempt at vlogging is as respectable as lonelygirl15 at the other end of the age spectrum.
The biggest advertising business on the planet exists on the margins: Google delivers advertising on millions of web pages around the world without creating a single concept or owning the medium. Its revenues are mind-boggling and its relative costs are marginal. Advertising is a business that, historically, delivered slender margins. Google has turned the industry model on its ear.
Now it plans to do the same in the world of television advertising. The current model hasn’t changed much since the beginning of radio broadcasting. The wastage is unbelievable, but it hasn’t mattered much because broadcasters are making a bundle and well, hey, if it ain’t broke …
“The fact is that every ad on TV is wasted on people who aren’t ready, willing or able to buy. Advertisers and the audience are not being well served. The ads are an annoying irrelevance we have come to accept in return for free sitcoms and soaps. But Google aims to change that.”
The fact is that every ad on TV is wasted on people who aren’t ready, willing or able to buy. Advertisers and the audience are not being well served. The ads are an annoying irrelevance we have come to accept in return for free sitcoms and soaps.
But Google aims to change that. Integrating its search relevance technology with your set will allow Google to serve ads for things that interest you. If you have searched the web for information about dog obedience classes, there’s a better-than-good chance you’ll receive messages for dog food. The shift would change the value model for advertisers dramatically. Campaigns served by Google won’t have the entire office buzzing around the proverbial water cooler—they will rely on the strangely genteel idea of relevance.
Learning to adapt to marginal media will be a genuine challenge to the advertising industry. It will impact on everything from the creative process and production to the buying and selling of airtime. I predict a bonanza for those ready to change and bust for those paralysed in its headlights.
Will you be the victor or the vanquished?
Comments
Peter Vegas
The world’s first ad was a poster done by a cave adman for a client who made spears. He created a poster and the cave media guy put it on a tree on a trail that the hunters walked down everyday. The only people who saw the poster were men who needed spears. Perfect. The client sold heaps. Then he began to wonder how he could sell even more. So he made the media caveman put a poster in the cave where the cave mums hung out all day. The media guy thought it was a waste. Cave mums didn’t use spears. But the client said do it anyway. You never know when a cave mum might want to buy a spear as a birthday gift.
Clients always have strict tightly defined target audience they want to reach in their brief. The brief usually has a secondary audience that includes everyone else. A client will always find a way and an ad agency to help to reach them.
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