Eric Friedman – Marketing.fm

Over the past few years I have read countless articles about the demise of the :30 second spot, the fading traditional Ad Shop, and the apparent ruin of TV as we know it; and quite frankly, I am sick of it. Contrary to the Buggles belief that “Video Killed the Radio Star” I believe that it made more people interested in music and therefore brought a larger audience to the radio. After all, TV is not going away it is just changing and evolving. In the next few years we will see a drastic change in the way media is consumed. As Bill Gates said in his keynote address at the 2007 International CES Conference,

“We’ve talked about this as the decade of digital lifestyle, the decade of digital work style. It’s not just one application that makes it happen. It’s the fact that as you adopt these things, they really go together.”

We are approaching a virtually integrated life, where every part of our day can be connected. We are seeing it with the iPhone, Windows Vista, and iTV, a convergence of technologies built into one place and our everyday lives. On a high level, this what this article aims to talk about, however, for my purposes I would like to speak about the evolving cable television industry and it’s soon to be integration with the internet and digital space.

With this in mind I am going to make a few predictions about where I think Advertising, TV, and the Internet will be in roughly the next 3 years. I will start in 2009 and work my way backwards to give you a better idea of where we will be and how we got there:

The Future: So its 2009, and TV still exists! Ads are continuing to support the framework of television. But TV has changed quite a bit since 2007, the new form of TV integrates the Internet, Live TV, and Recorded/On Demand TV and it’s all at your fingertips. You can choose to view a show at any time recorded or not. Let’s say you missed last night’s episode of 24, well you can pull it from the database and watch it even if you didn’t record it. Live TV still exist, and so do traditional TV spots, but now they are much shorter because there is so much Ad content out there that longer spots create too much clutter. Finally, the internet has been fully integrated into your digital media space. You can access your desktop right from your big screen, pull up multiple windows showing TV, internet content, and media content simultaneously. The possibilities with these three integrated technologies are endless, we are talking pre-show ads, post-shows ads, in-show non-intrusive ads, show selection screen Ads and they will all be relevant to YOU! Though these ideas are dreamt up, it will remain to be seen what kind of creative ways advertisers will use this platform. Keep in mind that theses are very real possibilities and the technology is there.

The Bridge to the Future: It’s 2008, awareness has been generated, the technology is ready, it’s affordable and relevant to the consumer, and advertisers are starting to put money into it. But we need people to adopt it, make it part of their everyday lives. The success of the platform will be largely dependent on getting consumer to make it part of the norm.

Present Time: Today is January 16^th, 2007 and the technology is ready to be presented to the world. But only the techies have caught on. It will be up to a few brave companies to break the mold, put money into R&D, and find the new medium that could change the way advertising is done. Whether it will be Microsoft, Apple, Google, Viacom, one of the major networks, or one of major cable providers, there is a serious opportunity for one group to rise above the rest. Only time will tell.

I am curious to see what everyone out there is thinking about this topic as well so please feel free to write down your thoughts. To be continued…

Editors Note: Adam is guest blogging at Marketing.fm and will be posting a Part II to this article and hopefully many more soon.

Technorati Tags: television, upfront, media 2007, predictions, marketing, advertising, future video, video, commercials