He used to be a couch potato that sat down at a specific time to watch a forty minute program in an hour. He combatted commercial breaks with trips to the kitchen, bathroom, or a press of the mute button on his lifelong friend, the remote. Advertisers didn’t mind. Yet now he no longer leaves the room when he watches his favorite shows. Nor does he mute. Equipped with a DVR and peanut shaped remote, he has the ability to alter time and the way traditional advertisers ultimately think. Radio? No thanks. He gets his favorite podcasts delivered to his iPod and consumes media whenever and however he wants. He is just one of many that are impacting the media landscape.
Earlier this week Advertising Age published an article describing the vision of Podbridge which would allow “advertisers to switch ads in and out of a hit TV show stored on home DVR, or dynamically place ads into a popular podcast that’s just sitting in a user’s iTunes library, waiting to be heard.”
This patent-granted technology is clearly an effort to adjust to the consumer-centric world that has developed. Consumers are telling content creators that it is all about them. They want to watch their favorite shows when they want, without interruption from advertisements.
While Podbridge will allow advertisers to swap in new ads over consumer’s DVRs or podcasts, won’t they just zap through them anyway?
In one of our previous articles, we discussed how advertisers are trying to circumvent the Tivo effect with five second ads toward the end of commercial breaks. These 5 second “jump-back” ads and things such as Podbridge are both trying to capture two benefits that digital signage already offers: the ability to display advertisements that cannot be skipped and the ability to display ads dynamically.
Resisting what the consumer is saying is not a good thing. Eventually advertisers will concede victory to the DVR users and put the effort in resisting them into the exploration of other vehicles such as digital signage networks.
