Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Interactive Advertisements...

This past weekend, while I was watching TV an observation struck me hard. That whenever commercial breaks come up I tend to change the channels. I believe this holds good for many people. Ad agencies spend lotsa money in making the ad and getting a suitable slot in TV to telecast. But what is the point if the viewers just switch the channels during commercial breaks...?

There are a few exceptional advertisements, which people patiently watch and then switch the channels. They are,
a) Ones with actor/actress/sports person who are in lime light (people stop to watch these ads for sometime but not regularly...after a while...they start searching for the remote)
b) Ones that attract kids
c) Ones that are brilliant
I find harldy a few advertisements that make me stop before switching channels.

All that cost & effort in making the ad are helluva great waste. I thought that the advertisements (telecasted in TV) are not serving their purposes.
Will ad agencies take a survey on that and make a good decision on what to do?

Obviously we can not pass a bill to legally enforce that the viewers must watch those advertisements. That will become a matter to laugh.

Using the technological advancements, advertisements can be made as interactive. Interactive?
Yes, interactive. Advertisements should be made to get inputs from the viewer (via Remote Control). Based on the input the advertisements should react differently. With the current TV sets it is not possible, that's obvious. TV manuafacturers and Ad Agencies can go for a tie-up to achieve this. A separate microprocessor chip to process 'interactive advertisements' may require to be implanted in the TV set. Microprocessor can be programmed to process the input from Remote Control during the particular commercials and react based on the inputs. Even with no input from Remote Control also the microprocessor should perform the commercial with default input...otherwise waiting for viewer's input indefinitely will be a huge loss to the TV channels.

'Interactive Advertisements' are not the only solution to make people watch the commercials without switching channels. This could be just one of the ways. A detailed study & survery needs to be done on this matter to come to a solid conclusion. Otherwise there is no point in Organizations/Ad agencies spending a lotsa money in TV Ads.

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