One Ad Too Many?
Customers hate Advertisements (usually) and will do almost anything to avoid them. Marketers on the other hand will continue to think of creative ways to make sure they cannot be avoided. PVRs have decreased the ability to deliver effective TV ads as many users will just simply fast forward through your commercial and ad blocker extensions have decreased the effectiveness of online ads. The response of Marketers to the ad blockers was creating viral ads that users would send to their friends and family, basically marketing the product/service for them. To combat the PVR situation they began forcing ads on people watching online (through a legitimate source) or On Demand but a new technique is coming to North America that is already common across Europe. Although this is not directly related to E-marketing, it is such a big deal for Marketers as a whole that it cannot be ignored.
Sponsored NHL and NBA jerseys are on there way and for sports fans this may make it one ad too many. We have no idea at the current time what these jerseys will actually look like and how many ads will be allowed on each teams jersey. It could be just like how European soccer teams have 1 logo on the front of their jersey or it could be the exact opposite where the players are covered head to toe in advertisements similar the the Spengler Cup. Hopefully it will be more like Europe rather than the Spengler Cup but if that is the situation we will notice that only the very large and powerful companies will be able to advertise and small to medium businesses will be left in the cold but that could be a good thing.
(Thomas Oswald/Keystone/AP) – Spengler Cup
In my opinion the more ads we throw at our customers, the better they will get at learning to ignore them. Even if I am watching a TV show without PVRing it, I still somehow manage to ignore the ads without even realizing it. I own a Manchester United shirt that has the AIG logo plastered in the middle but yet everyone recognizes it as the Manchester United Jersey and manages to ignore the fact the AIG logo is even there. If you take into account the fact that as a Marketing student I find ads to be interesting and something to learn for, you can only imagine what the rest of the world is doing. Our brains can be very selective to what they pay attention to and this applies to ads as well. Our brains have started to learn how to completely tune out ads and the more ads we throw at customers, the better I think people will get at ignoring all these ads. We also can’t forget that “anti-facebook” platforms like Ello that have no advertisements are becoming very popular (Ello receives about 40,000 requests per hour) because people are getting annoyed with ads.
