Adressable advertising: The future is contextual

Ok, so those of us in ‘digital‘ agencies have known it for ever. But it seems the grown-ups at the traditional agencies have started to see that the blunt instruments of TV and Radio spots can get clever with the right tech.

Picture this; you’re sat in front of the 32″ LCD that you can’t afford (I write from experience), it’s half-time in the live football and you’re watching a 30 second spot for a Ford Fiesta. Down the road your mate, who can afford his 50″ Plasma, is watching the same match and is seeing a 30 second spot for a Ford Mondeo ST.

Online we’ve had whole waves of personalisation and targeted content. Clever people at places like ad serving specialists eyeblaster allow us to use tricks like behavioural sequencing (the next time you’re served an ad it makes decisions on what to show you based on what you did with the last ad).

The idea of Addressable Advertising has been connected with the growth in IPTV for a while, which makes perfect sense. Oversimplified I know, but IPTV is a kind of cross between the web and TV.

IPTV operates in an environment where contextual advertising or marketing has almost become second nature. Add to that the fact each viewer has a unique IP address and it becomes pretty straightforward to send them specific advertising or programming.

But a couple of months ago we heard that Google wanted to introduce their contextual advertising to a television set near you.

Now Murdoch Jnr’s plans for Sky are also taking us towards the same territory. Smart TV is a SkyPlus box with a built in ad server presenting you with relevant adverts based on what Sky already know; your name and address. And what they can learn; your viewing behaviour.

And for once, our US cousins are ahead of us. It appears that the top ten U.S. cable networks support technology from Visible World who have a nifty bit of gear that allows you to create ads from segments of video and audio, assembling the relevant ad for each specific audience.

So just maybe we are finally all starting to meet in the middle!

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