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Google Targets TV Advertising
mytrip writes to tell us that Google may have television advertising in the cross-hairs. CEO Eric Schmidt recently stated that viewers shouldn't have to stand for tv commercials that are a "waste of your time" and says Google is planning to deliver "targeted measurable television ads." I just hope I can still skip them with my TiVO in a couple years.
The overall concept is great. If commercials were 'targetted' to the particular viewer, they would be more effective and hence could either raise more revenue for television networks or allow for shorter commercial breaks.
The catch is this : I don't see what role google can have in this. They might be able to develop the technology for delivering the video cheaply and reliably using google OS and commodity PC hardware, like the rest of their systems work. This would make the back end at the cable and telecom tv providers cheaper. They could also develop the mechanism for choosing commercials ('searches' based on a users demographics) and evaluating success.
However, the profit is still in owning the pipes. How can google make money when the ownership of the network is in the hands of other : the telephone and cable companies.
If Google can reverse the trend on some channels to move towards LARGE popups that move around and make noise on the bottom have of the screen DURING the actual show, completely ruining and interrupting it, than GREAT! Go for it!. I really hate trying to read something on the screen like a subtitle or place&time text only to have a big race car drive across it, obscuring my view and making loud tire screeching noises over a quiet/dark/moody intro scene to some show.
Quiet, text-only, to-the-point, factual advertisement is a lot more tolerable.
Morphing Software
Having quite a bit of marketing background, I can assure you that it's completely intentional when an ad isn't like the Geico or Apple ads you mention. The main problem with such ads is that they don't explicitly show the product enough. They work fine for an insurance ad, as insurance really isn't a tangible thing (like a bottle of beer or a particular restaurant are). When it comes to something like insurance, you're trying to get the viewer to remember the name or the logo. It's rare that one can successfully associate something memorable with the name of a firm, as in the case of a gecko with the name "Geico".
Most ads are there to appeal to the ignorant, unwashed masses. And what often works best is to show them your product over and over and over and over and over and over. Like in Gatorade commercials, which are often just a montage of many clips of sweathy athletes drinking Gatorade. The same goes for shampoo. That way the consumer will remember the appearance of the item the next time they're in a store that sells it.
Imagine watching Seinfeld and Jerry pulls a Coke from his refrigerator. Only, in some households he might be seen pulling a Pepsi. Developing the technology to dynamically insert products into the programming is the next logical step in advertising. We see it already, statically, with companies paying gobs of money for product insertion. Imagine instead shooting movies and programming with "generic" green-board like products, and then replacing them with images of the desired product, on a case-by-case basis. You already see some of this in baseball games. There is an ad billboard behind home plate in Fenway park. Nominally it is "green", but it gets replaced in the video stream (at the broadcaster end) with ads. It's not a huge step to move this insertion down to the DVR/cable box. This is where companies like TIVO have the inside track. Their boxes could do the insertion, under command from 'central control'. And they already know our viewing habits (not just what we watch, but when we watch it, and for how long), and our "clicking" habits.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.