the new tv spot

Yet another article—this one in USATODAY—talking about the evolution of the TV ad.

I guess I have a hard time understanding why it’s so hard a concept to grasp, since to me it’s very obvious: real communication has shifted to interactive mediums and it happens when I’m interested in it happening. I am one of those guys the author writes about, who skips stuff in TiVo at home and reads AvantGo on the way to the office.

Look at the ads of the golden age of TV. Back in the day, they were the sole sponsors of the show, so they were really long and you explained everything in the spot. Mostly, because that was the most engaging way to tell everyone about all the great details of the product. But look at today. We’ve got trade magazines up the wazoo. We’ve got specialty networks with shows that only review products. We’ll go to web sites and geek out in full over over technology X and compare prices before we go to the store. We simply have too much information to digest, all of which being ready at our fingertips when we want it. To expect television spots to fill that kind of role these days, elbowing their way into our leisure time to educate us about a single product, is ridiculous.

TV has been in many ways motion billboards…and it will continue further down that path in the ad future. The only reason it hasn’t already is because we haven’t found that new model to measure ads as such in order to develop a pricing structure that that everyone can agree on. It’s only going to take one or two big successes. But we do know this: TV is cold contact, the biggest kind you can have, but cold contact is nearly dead. Contextual and expert is where it’s at.