These two recent articles show one of the key challenges facing the advertising industry. Take a look at this survey from InsightExpress. Fifty-three percent of the people surveyed said they want movie theatres to stop showing advertising. That's more then half of the people surveyed don't like ads in movie theatres. Is this a shock? I mean, if you're in the advertising industry, ask yourself how many times a family member or friend asked you to put more commercials before the movie starts. Anyone? Not likely. Yet, because we're a captive audience in the movie theatre, the advertising industry figures what the hell, eventually we'll stop complaining about it and put up with it. Is that really how we want to interact with the audience?
HIX NIX PIX ADS - A variety of well regarded sources are projecting that cinema advertising - ads that appear before movies in theaters, not ads for movie theaters - is poised to become one of the fastest growing forms of ad-supported media. The problem, according to some new research, is moviegoers don't like the ads all that much, and would like to see movie theaters stop running them. In other words, they pretty much feel about cinema advertising the way they feel about advertising in all the other media: they would like to avoid it.
Thank goodness they cannot. Possibly with the exception of some forms of outdoor media, there is no getting around cinema ads. Except of course for those who want to linger at the concession stands or inside the rest rooms and risk missing that hilarious trailer everyone's bound to be giggling about when you return to your seat. In cinema advertising, Madison Avenue does indeed appear to have finally found a captive audience environment that may help replace the erosion they're experiencing with television commercials. And don't think consumers aren't noticing them. According to the research released Wednesday by InsightExpress 91 percent of moviegoers said they "notice" commercials in movies. That's the good part. The bad part is that 53 percent believe movie theaters should stop showing commercial, while 27 percent said they actually plan to attend fewer movies as a result of cinema advertising.
Or check out this recent article on the ClickZ about putting ads in video games, More Than Fun With Games.
Make no mistake about it: In the future, video games will be a more powerful media force. As consumers become increasingly harder to reach and the ability to consistently expose them to brands becomes more difficult with so much noise in the system, games' immersive nature may just become a better environment for putting our (and our clients') brands in front of consumers.
Yep, it talked about all of the appropriate demographics of game players and why the audience wants to reach them. It mentioned the issues involving measurability, ROI and all of the other important advertising metrics. What I didn’t see was any information about whether or not the gamers want advertising in their games. I didn’t see any information or studies about the value that advertising brings to the videogame experience.
Once again, how many of your gamer friends have asked you if you can put advertisements into video games? I think that while you may find a tolerant attitude about it (sound familiar, like commercials in movie theatres), there aren’t many game players asking for advertisements. And that doesn’t even begin to ask about the appropriateness of placing an ad in a game where the objective is killing and maiming. There’ve certainly been some excellent results from creating custom content game experiences, but forcing ads into yet another aspect of the consumers life is a different thing.
With all of our efforts to reach an ever elusive audience, wouldn’t it be helpful to explore creating a value proposition for them, rather then continuing to look for more and more places where we can cram a message down their throats?
BTW, you can read more how we feel about this issue by checking out Are You Just Hunting, an article we wrote last year about the advertising hunt!
Link: MediaPost Advertising & Media Directory
Link: New York Post Online Edition: news.
Link: More Than Fun With Games.
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