“social networks don’t reign supreme anymore as the dominant mediators for online ads. Instead, they act like old-school television networks. In the meantime, the makers of old-school entertainment—companies like Disney and Fox—are acting a lot more like the Silicon Valley companies that seemed poised to replace them.”
This is how the author of this article envisions the near-future of advertising. I guess what he presents is, a hybrid advertising system where traditional ads and digital ads integrate and interpenetrate with each other.
I agree with him on this blueprint, however, I disagree with some of his arguments.
The author says online ads are accompanied with fake news, which fail to reach the target audience while at the same time, ignore the wider pool of possible customers. Hyper-targeting as a current trend will eventually be discarded and replaced by TV ads. Everything that’s old will be new again.
The thing is, I don’t believe the “hyper-targeting” as he defines—that focuses on one-to-one targeting only and neglects the rest of the society—will be the future of online marketing. Precision marketing is a trend now and would always be a trend. A brand can’t be built through talking to the whole world; it must find an effective way to communicate the right message to the right person at the right time and location.
In addition, the returning dominant TV ads, as he says, are “both far and wide.” In the near-future, when marketers know more about how to target TV ads, they would make TV ads that both target at a specific group of people and reach broader audiences. I can totally see this possibility but I just don’t feel that TV ads will prevail and overshadow online ads. Personally, the future of advertising would be an "ad mix" where the old-school ads and digital ads are integrated, and each was given full play to its strong point.
1 comment:
Great post - I agree with you about TV ads becoming a "mix" strategy. They will need to incorporate targeted video -- the big change in the industry is that whereas TV ads were always "push" media, they will become more of a "pull" media as digital grows. Our agency has changed our TV production strategy over the past year. We now shoot the commercial for broadcast, but at the same time, we shoot B-roll for digital video and social content. It extends the life and impact of the content, but it has to be put together in a completely different way.
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