IBM Predicts Massive Shifts In Advertising

Tech.Luver writes with news from IBM Global Business Services about its new report, The End of Advertising as We Know It (report PDF, summary PDF). It forecasts greater disruption for the advertising industry in the next five years than has occurred over the previous 50. Among the conclusions: broadcasters will have to change their mass audience mind-set to cater to niche consumer segments. Distributors will need to deliver targeted, interactive advertising for a range of multimedia devices. Advertising agencies must become brokers of consumer insights and guide allocation of advertising dollars amid exploding choices. All players must adapt to a world where advertising inventory is increasingly bought and sold in open exchanges vs. traditional channels.

Comments

Advertisers will become more devious

[AmiMoJo]

The technology already exists to almost completely avoid adverts. PVRs, downloading, adblock plugins, spam filters etc. I never recognise any of the ads when forced to watch them at a friends house.

The solution advertisers will come up with is to be more devious. More ads in more annoying places, that are harder to avoid. Mass astroturfing, product placement, adware etc. It's no wonder Microsoft are filing patents for ad delivery at the OS level - they could become the only people capable of delivering ads at all.

How much would you pay for TV?

[yotto]

When Coke realizes that nobody's watching their commercials, it may get expensive to watch Heroes.

I don't know how much advertising (that I don't watch, thanks to my DVR) subsidizes my TV watching, but I do know that I wouldn't pay that much more than I currently pay for TV. Does that mean the end of TV? I like a small number of shows. If they're too expensive for me to pay for (or worse, too expensive for enough people, but not me, so the shows go bankrupt even though I'd happily pay) will I lament the good old days when the corporations helped fund them?

Is that worse than it is now?

I don't know. But this post is brought to you by Gatorade, with the electrolytes that plants love.

Some insight for the advertisers

[Iphtashu Fitz]

Personally, I HATE any website that has animated advertising of any type. When I'm trying to read an article, whether its somebodies personal blog or a major news corporation, I find animation of any type highly distracting. The animation always distracts my eyes from reading the article that I'm actually interested in. Rather than put up with distracting advertisements I make use of various tools to block Flash, animated gifs, etc. If those don't work for a particular website then I simply stop visiting those sites. For example, I used to visit the ABC news website (abcnews.com) on a regular basis but ever since their last couple of "upgrades" to their website I've avoided them like the plague. I find their use animation on their front page extremely annoying. Back when they had a more static home page I would visit their site on a daily basis, but they've effectively driven me away from all the "glitz" they've added. I now go elsewhere for the news and won't got back to ABC news any time soon. They need to realize that animated makeovers that do nothing more than demonstrate that their designers know all about "Web 2.0", CSS, etc. has a huge potential for turning away potential visitors.