Technology and promotion

Fascinating article from the BBC on how technology is changing advertising. Firstly how ‘traditional’ media are becoming less and less effective as we are better able to avoid the adverts and then how technology is allowing product placement to grow.

No, the beauty of this is, I think, so one can put different adverts in for different markets. So, what they drink in the version shown in Japan would be different to the version sold in Britain and different again in Brazil. My first thought (as it so often is) was the upcoming Ashes and Lions tours. You could have different advertisements on the pitch or on the perimeter for different countries (VB Bitter in Australia and Tetley’s in the UK?). What if you could do it for the player’s shirts? You could have different adverts shown during the live game as for the highlights package too. The segmenting is almost endless.

Firms could have different background ads for the cinema release from the DVD or TV release version, IF there were significantly different market segments in the audience. It may even be possible to have different adverts for people in different streets within the same town if marketers thought that meant you were in a different market segment. Much marketing is already done in this way. ‘They’ know your postcode and what kind of housing that represents. Marketers then make assumptions about the people who live there.

Could this mean a change in pricing for visual entertainment? Perhaps, heading towards the marginal cost (as Economics suggests it should) of near zero? Perhaps this is how firm’s combat illegal downloads… If enough revenue can be made from highly segmented product placement adverts then the content could largely be given away, thus increasing the probable audience, allowing them to charge more for the advertising and cutting out illegal third party downloads.