Is the end in sight for maddening TV adverts? Fingers crossed!

Yesterday, Google announced it’s introducing a new format on its YouTube service which will allow users to skip video adverts after watching the first five seconds. Advertisers will only have to pay if a visitor opts to view the whole of the offered advert: this, in turn,  will allow them to figure out what will genuinely engage the public – and should save them a shedload of money.

When I started this blog a year ago, I had intended devoting at least a third of the posts to new media matters – and at least half of those to the use of new media by commercial companies. In all that time I have managed precisely two posts about new media, which probably gives an accurate indication of my current level of interest in the field.

I, along with various associates and partners, spent a total of just over three years trying to talk sense to businesses about the internet, interactive TV (really video on demand) and social networks. Some of them listened, the more enlightened paid us to give them invariably excellent advice, and several even hired us to produce new media services for them - including online TV channels, interactive online adverts, and interactive video-on-demand experiences on TV  (i.e. you choose if and when to view a marketing message.) 

The time spent dealing with marketing folk was, on the whole, fun and quite lucrative, but when I unexpectedly got the chance to return to live TV production (albeit with heavy interactive elements) it was like discovering I’d spent two years trying to play the piano to an audience that didn’t much care for piano music - while wearing boxing gloves. 

The problem with selling new advertising formats to marketing professionals was that every time we began to engage their attention, there’d be a decidedly Old School advertising executive whispering in their other ear thatnothing needed to change – go on wasting millions shoving annoying, intrusive linear TV adverts (whose reach and effect are basically unquantifiable) down viewers’ throats rather than experiment with new forms of so-called “engagement” advertising which allow you to tell exactly how many people watched your marketing message, and what they did as a result.

Not knowing anything about how the ad business worked, agencies’ reluctance to improve the effectiveness of their clients’ spend initially confused me. But I soon realized that the current system – shouting messages at media consumers most of whom basically wanted you and your brand to crawl off and die and stop spoiling their enjoyment of an entertaining programme or website – provided too many execs in advertising agencies, TV companies and marketing departments with too good a living for them to give it up without a fight: the structure that had been in place since ITV launched in 1955 simply funded too many mortgages, school fees and exotic holidays for anyone – apart from an enlightened, coffee-smelling minority – to change anything. Traditional ad agencies took to setting up a digital department - then ignored it, and continued doing what they’d always done.

So when the web - and interactive TV platforms  such as Virgin Media – really got going, their ad sales people found it easier – and more lucrative – to ignore what their new platforms could actually do, and go along with the pretense that nothing needed to change. Essentially, advertisers were charged for occupying space, mainly in the form of banners or pop-ups or pre-roll ads (i.e. those fantastically annoying videos which precede a decent piece of online video content, and which, infuriatingly, can’t be skipped). 

The old ways sort of suited most people, and anyone challenging the system was about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit.

At the same time as all this was going on, the advertising industry here and in the States was regularly releasing spurious research purporting to show that digital video recorders (Sky Plus, TiVo, Humax Freeview boxes etc.) wouldn’t have a serious impact on TV advertising, despite the viewer’s new-found ability to skip ads at the press of a button, because – and here we entered the realms of fantasy – TV viewers actually enjoy adverts(!), or they can’t be bothered recording programmes anyway (!!), so they can’t skip adverts, and no one ever flicks over to another channel when the ads come on, or goes for a wee, or makes a cup of tea. Adverts, you see, are essentially a much-valued consumer advice service. 

When we’d all stopped laughing, they came up with the best one of the lot: because people with PVRs (or DVRs) watch more TV, even if they regularly skip TV advertising, they’ll end up watching more TV adverts!

Settle down, now! Advertising’s supposed to thrive on bullshit!

Now, though, with so many Western economies under the cosh,  it seems the concept of value-for-money is finally moving up the agenda: after all, when times are tough, it’s marketing budgets that are supposed to get it in the neck. Hence, I presume, Google’s intriguing  new approach, which seems to guarantee that advertisers will only pay when a consumer has genuinely engaged with whatever video message they’re pumping out (some genuine-sounding research into TV advertising suggests fewer than 20% of viewers actually watch any advert – if you have a big secret you really want to protect, I suggest you announce it in a 30” TV spot ad: no one will ever know!).

The thing now – and this was the other advice we used to give prospective clients – is that what you show in that first five seconds of online video advertising has to be sensationally good to make anyone choose to stay for the rest of the ad: it doesn’t have to be expensive or glossy (bang go all those five-day shoots in the Bahamas) – it just has to grab users by the throat. Video advertising could finally be about to get interesting. Who knows? – we might even be entering an era which will see the death of the “persuasion through annoyance” approach.

Just imagine a world without that fat GoCompare bastard!

But somehow, I doubt that overhauling a rotten system run for the benefit of those who maintain it will prove that simple: the huge downturn in traditional TV  advertising in 2009 has been almost entirely reversed in 2010. That suggests there’s little point in trying to teach an old dog new tricks when the old tricks keep paying off the mortgage and the school fees. 

Of course, this massively expensive system has to be paid for and that’s achieved by increasing the cost of our products and services - just as vested interests in the public sector ensure that our taxes remain sky-high.

Vested interests are the curse of this - or any - age.