p2pnet news view | Advertising:- Bad news for parents.

“For children ages 10 to 14 who use the Internet, the computer is a bigger draw than the TV set, according to a study recently released by DoubleClick Performics, a search marketing company,” says The New York Times.

In March, Google completed its multi-billion-dollar acquisition of DoubleClick, “a company that offers online ad serving and management technology to advertisers, web publishers and ad agencies”.

You can bet your boots anything either company has an interest in, including studies, will tie directly into finding ways to overtly and/or covertly thrust advertisements and promotions down the throats of unwilling ‘consumers’ —- including children.

“The study found that 83 percent of Internet users in that age bracket spent an hour or more online a day, but only 68 percent devoted that much time to television,” the story says, observing children, “often did research online before making a purchase (or bugging their parents to make one).”

Performics reported some places online were more popular with kids than others, says the NYT, stating, “While 72 percent of the children online belonged to a social networking site (usually MySpace), 60 percent of them said they rarely or never read blogs.”

And that means Googlers and DoubleClickers are dreaming up ways to get into the minds of children. After all, they’re not tomorrow’s consumers. They’re already today’s.

‘Technologically savvy enough to dodge ads’

What’s a “product-centered” program? - p2pnet asked in April, continuing:

“It’s a extension of the marketing technique used by companies such as Apple and Marlboro cigarettes to have their product blatantly featured in a movie.

“But with ‘product-centered’ programming, there’s no attempt to pretend whatever it is that’s being promoted is just an incidental part of an overall scene.

“And it’ll be aimed squarely at the Net.”

Hmmmm

Companies are, “increasingly aware that a 30-second ad break is no longer the effective tool it once was, particularly with the young who are technologically savvy enough to dodge ads,” says The Age.

“It is getting easier to avoid watching traditional TV advertising,” it has Peter Pynta, director of sales and marketing at Neuro-Insight, “which measures viewers’ emotional responses to programming”.

Consumers, “increasingly” have the power to, “change the way they consume content”.

Thanks largely to the net, ‘consumers’ have again become customers, and they’re exercising free choice which, in turn, means they’re choosing to bypass ads they didn’t want to see in the first place. And that’s, “really driven the whole trend towards product placement,” says the story.

In other words, ‘product’ is ‘placed’ into videos and the like so people can’t avoid seeing it/them.

We call them ad-flicks.

“Those placements are not designed to jump out at you as an ad would but it’s still very, very powerful,” The Age quotes Pynta as saying.  “It’s not explicit advertising but we do know that while you’re watching a program all of the content that you see, as a whole, goes in.”

“While the television series Sex And The City generated business for designer brands such as Jimmy Choo and Manolo Blahnik, some think the film took product placement too far,” it states.

“That movie was product placement,” says Todd Sampson, CEO of ad agency Leo Burnett. “I think they stopped it at 60 to 70 brands represented in that movie. If you have too much product placement, it just becomes an ad and people are not that interested in watching a two-hour ad.”

Oh, Really?

But that hasn’t stopped advertisers in the US, “from spending an estimated $4 billion on product placement last year, with Coca-Cola leading the way,” says the story, adding:

“Advertising Federation of Australia executive director Mark Champion said that although product placement was on the rise, many clients were still wary. ‘It is part of the thinking these days … but clients still have to weigh up whether the amount they pay to have their product in a certain program or film offers a good return.”

Will ad-flicks be interrupted by ad-breaks?

(Just asking. )

The New York Times - Preferring the Web Over Watching TV, August 24, 2008
p2pnet - Ad-flicks - coming your way online, April 18, 2008
The Age - Ads’ 30 seconds of fame under threat, August 24, 2008

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 9:03 am and is filed under Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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