Home Made Advertising

Another example of how digital technology is blurring the boundaries between audience and producer and how it's helping to lower the costs for traditional media institutions. Pringles will be using an ad made for just £300 by a member of the public. The ad will be first shown on terrestrial TV in Christmas day on ITV. The cost to Prigles of running the ad once on ITV is £60,000 but you could add that again to the cost if an ad agency had produced the ad for them. By running the competition for a new ad, Pringles have saved a huge amount of money and the winner of the competition has earned a reputation for himself within advertising circles - as well as the £2,000 prize. Of course Pringles can also benefit from the low cost viral marketing this will inevitably lead to.

YouTube Proves Its Worth

YouTube has just been bought by Google for a small fortune, proving the popularity of watching video online rather than through your TV. Google are likely to have been attracted to YouTube because of two things: its current popularity earned through viral publicity and the distributon deals it has signed with Universal Pictures and CBS television in America. The signing of these deals are a clear sign that the big traditional media institutions are convinced of the future of online, bitesize viewing, where viewers watch their favourite programmes or movies online rather than on the couch.

Advertisers Creating Content As Living, Breathing Adverts

I saw a report on Channel 4 News last night that I was hoping to find on their site this morning. Unfortunately, Cheryl Tweedy's status as Sexiest Footballer's Girlfriend was considered more important. In any case, it was all about the future of advertising in the digital age and reported on developments at advertising agencies like Satchi & Saatchi, where they are developing a girl band with the intention of selling them to companies as an advertising medium. This was linked with the wider fall in advertising revenue for traditional mass media like TV broadcasters and newspapers. A representative from Nike was interviewed to confirm that more and more of their advertising budget is being spent on things like viral and other internet advertising. You can find out more about how advertisers are reacting to the digital age at the Saatchi site (accessible through the link in the title of the post) provided you can get past the nonsense speak that is common to many in the industry.

The Internet And Advertising - A Viral Future?

Channel 4's Ideas Factory has an accessible article on the future of 'viral' marketing and advertising. Instead of advertising to the mass market through mass entertainment outlets like broadcast tv, viral marketing uses the combined power of the internet and bored office workers to spread the advertising message. Only those messages which are strong enough, 'infectious' enough, will survive and reach a useful audience. Wider access to broadband will of course increase its effectiveness as video messages can be the most infectious.