What if I sold you an Ad?
If you grew up watching cartoons and movies on a Television, I bet you know the importance of an advertisement. The two-minute gap is all you got to refill your snacks, hydrate yourself, take a quick break, and get back to your spot.
Life happened. We all moved away from a 26-inch TV screen to a 5-inch mobile screen. And with this transition, the era of digital advertising arrived. Gadgets, contents, and advertisements are now personalized to target one user at a time. A google search for places to stay in Bali reflects on your Instagram handle as an advertisement and that too with a 10% discount. The state is such that advertisements are now more personalized than the product hosting it.
Eric Bradlow from The Wharton School brilliantly explains how targetted advertisements have grown from magazines to personalized YouTube ads. This seems quite natural. As customers moved from offline to the online shopping experience, billboards were replaced by pop-up ads. But, is going digital the future of advertisements? I wanted to brainstorm on this and think about what would I do if I have to sell an Ad tomorrow.
Addressable Advertising — The blend of online and offline advertisement
The advent of D2H, Smart TV’s and subscription business ensured nothing is truly offline. Everything requires the customer to fill in their email address, phone number, or any other unique digital identifier. This means companies can target ads on TV based on an individual’s browsing pattern. The ads you see will be completely different from your neighbor or a very close friend residing a few blocks away. This is called addressable advertising and is slowly making its arrival without much noise.
This works the other way round as well. Imagine watching an intense El Classico with your friends during a sleepover. The very next day, you see ads on your browser and other mobile apps about football turfs near your location. You are not really alone here because anyone who googled their way to your house will also have the same ad displayed across gadgets. In a nutshell, ads here did not only recommend turfs to play but also formed a team of players.
When offline activities are matched with your online presence, companies get a complete picture of who and what you are. All the 200 people coming out of the theatre after watching Dangal are potential prospects for SLAM, Cult.fit, or any physical fitness centers. This makes clustering users easier. From then on, the job displaying relevant ads to customers is as simple as changing slides during a PowerPoint presentation.
With touchpoints to collect data exponentially increasing, ads are bound to stalk you wherever you go. An intelligent company will always be aware of the thin line between subtle canvasing and creeping out. With that said, advertisements will no longer be intended to sell you a product or service but rather instill a need that you would have not realized in the first place.
