“In a world where no one experiences a commercial they don’t want to, do you really expect people to listen to what you tell them and be sold to every third minute?  You’re dreaming.”

I can’t admit that I’m not guilty of ad avoidance.  Working in advertising, I should probably feel a little guilty about that, but I don’t.  We are exposed to so many ads in a typical day (up to 625), can we really blame our audiences that try to avoid them?  Pain avoidance is human nature, and some advertising can be mighty painful.

With the increased amount of advertising that is thrown at us across an increasing number media channels, relevancy is everything to advertising success.  Ensuring that your ad is front of the right person at the right time should be much easier, given the increased amount of adjustable variables; audience information, flexibility over placement, channel, type, media format, and the additional functionality that new technology has given us.

Relevancy is large contributor to the success of any given advertising.  Being exposed to irrelevant ads can grate, but being bombarded with them day after day after day after day can really become an irritation.  For me, being aware of the targeting potential of some networks, it grates even more.  Advertisers throwing money on blanket ad campaigns with little to no targeting really gets my goat up.

When working with clients, I’ve always worked hard to ensure any advertising is as targeted as humanly possible.  Why should irrelevant consumers be exposed to ads that they have almost no chance to respond to? All this does is irritate the consumer and drive up advertising costs.  And, over time, this irritation builds up and turn into ad avoidance.  Working in a media where ads are being randomly thrown to people just seems like madness.

I can understand that ‘traditional’ media has major problems with targeting because of the way the media is delivered.  Sure, they can target by program type and time of day, but in general you’ll be exposed to a lot of crap ads you really don’t care about simply due to the fact it’s a one to many delivery channel.  Sky is a little better with across specific channels, but it’s still very generic.

I don’t however forgive ‘new’ media to the same degree.  Targeting is getting better with some services, but is still based on guesswork and still has miles to go.  With websites taking in a plethora of information about it’s users (age, interests, education, employment, ‘pages…’) there’s really no excuse why their delivered advertising should ever be as irrelevant as other channels.  Streaming music services are able to log everything you’ve ever listened to and how much.  They are able to know your exact music tastes down to a tee, so why am I being advertising Celine Dion albums when all I listen to is drum and bass?

I really like advertising, let’s just get it targeted, eh? Can you imagine only ever seeing ads relevant to your interests? How nice would life be where every piece of advertising you see is something personal to you, that you’d actually consider buying?

Since the recent rise in popularity of Spotify, I’ve had a few discussions with people regarding the business models it uses. I’ll assume you’re familiar with how it’s advertising and charging model works; get the service for free and get ads, or pay a monthly premium and receive the service ad free.

It’s an interesting approach, and one of the first major media services (that I know of) that allows it users to pay more and get the service ad free. Some websites also offer this option but not many. And those that charge for content through paywalls typically still feature advertising, albeit of a lesser degree.

Personally, I think it’s a great idea and hope that it will shape the future for many other paid services – though I have some doubts about whether it will benefit advertising.

TV subscription services such as Sky and Virgin charge for content in the same way, but their services feature advertising as well – you pay a premium for the service, and are still advertised to.  With the rise of the Spotify model, I know more than a few people who are becoming annoyed with that TV model – it’s almost creating a mindset for subscription services of “I’m paying for a service, why should I have to receive advertising too?”

Radio works in the same way, but is always free.  I’m sure  if they were to introduce a subscription service, you’d expect it to be ad free.  Cinema? You pay for your ticket but still get 30+ minutes of ads before a film, fair?

And the BBC, well they just charge anyone that has the potential to view the service as they maybe viewing it, and can function advertising free. Not a particularly fair model, but I’ll come onto that in some later discussions.

I think the Spotify model works great, and on tv subscription services could work well, it could almost be the future of content delivery.  I don’t however think it will be able to be delivered (at least not in the close future) – simply due to the technology that will be required and the cost.  With Sky requiring you to pay a premium and them receiving revenue from advertising to make their business profitable, I’d imagine they’d need quite a high subscription charge to make an ad free model affordable.  Upwards of £100 a month? Who knows.

Either way, I think the Spotify model is great and a subscription model that I hope a lot of other media providers consider.  Pay a subsciption, get the service ad free.  I also think a lot of people, particularly on what’s considered ‘over-advertisied’ services such as Sky, would take it up.

I don’t think it’s particularly beneficial for advertisers though, as it reduces their audience size and the amount of advertising people are exposed to.

You could argue if we make advertising more targeted and exposure people to less in general, then we’ll see it perform better, and I think that’s the key.

Less frequency, more relevancy.

Yep, that’s right.  As of the end of this month I’m moving – both at work and home.  Relocating to the West country.

Having been at my current company for over 6 years, I’ve been looking for a fresh challenge in new areas for a while.  In my own time I’ve setup a blog to learn a few new things, and also been pretty active in the Social Media circles, establishing and getting familiar with Twitter, and being more active in the ecommerce community, as well as attending a few digital meetups.

That’s not to say I haven’t  had a great time here – over those 6 years I’ve been involved in some excellent projects with some great clients – across all online channels covering a number of industries.  I’ve setup email marketing databases from scratch, structured and managed client campaigns, implemented world class analytics solutions, exhibited at no end of trade shows and worked with some awesome people.  The list goes on and on…

I’m looking forward to the move and being able to develop my skills further – across different marketing channels, with new clients and new projects – as well as excitement that comes with completely relocating to a new part of the country.

It’s expected to be completed in the next couple of weeks – However in the meantime my tweeting & blogging frequency has slowed down considerably – but it shouldn’t be for long, eh?

I know I’ve not posted for a while, the past week has been pretty hectic and things don’t look to be calming down either. I’ve got a queue of drafts lined up, having the time to go over and post them is just out of my reach.

Most of my tweeting is re-tweets, not a bad thing but it’d be nice to get some time to have a good old look around and see whatsa going on. Luckily my twitter list is pretty targeted to the industry, but still, it’s nice to get some time to catch up with things.

In summary? Still here, still alive, just not enough minutes in my day.