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Marketing the Internet on Television
The most successful marketing targets the right person, in the right place, at the right time. The right person is anybody who is interested in what you’re selling, the right place and the right time are wherever and whenever that person is ready to make a purchase.
The Way We Were
Television has always been particularly bad at this, making up for its lack of precision with an enormous audience (the “there must be someone out there who wants this product” approach).
Good direct marketing sits at the other end of the scale, targetting the right people, with the right products, at broadly the right time.
Pretty much everything else (in this very simplistic overview) resides somewhere in-between.
The Times They Are A–Changing
Things have changed over the years, but not much, and new ideas have come and gone. That all changed when Google introduced AdWords. Suddenly, it was possible to create and display an advertisement that appeared only for the right person, at the right time, in the right place (at a regional or city-wide level).
The launch of new mobile devices (such as Apple’s iPhone) that use Google’s mapping services take this even further, opening the door to incredibly targetted and timely advertising. A restaurant with a lunchtime special offer can run an ad that is only delivered to people within a half-mile radius, searching on “restaurant”, between 10a.m. and 1p.m., for example.
ipTV on mobile devices may offer similar opportunities in the near future, albeit without the immediacy (and cost-effectiveness) of a rapidly-deployed Google Ad.
Even a well-executed direct marketing campaign starts to look vaguelly scattergun in the face of such precision.
Don’t Call It A Comeback, I’ve Been Here For Years…
So what of that big chunk of plastic sat in your living room? Is it doomed to fall ever further behind in the race for greater personalisation in marketing? Quite possibly, but I did notice one interesting glimmer of hope the other night.
eBay is currently running a series of adverts on British television that include information about a live auction. Each ad features a single product with a matter of hours (or even minutes) of auction-time left to run, along with the current bid price (accurate as of twenty seconds ago, according to the small print).
This turns the idea of “right time” on its head, because in the world of eBay the buyer doesn’t decide when is the right time to buy, the seller does. Of course, this situation is specific to eBay’s business, but it does provide a tantalising glimpse of what the future may hold for non-mobile television advertising.
The fact that eBay, an entirely internet-based business, is even bothering with television is interesting in itself. The things they’re doing with television are even more so.