TV Ads are broken
Today I was watching some sitcom on TV, with lots of boring ads every 10 mins. While watching the ads I noticed that almost all ads tell you their website and ask you to visit it to buy their product.
That had me thinking — how in this world will people remember some vendors website. I spend atleast 12 hours a day on my computer, still dont end up remembering the websites these ads suggest, even if I like their product. Well, it could be because I didn’t like their product so much, or may be because I could just google it (or bing it). But how do you expect a average internet user to remember these sites?
There’s something missing here. Whenever you expect a lot from the user of a system, it almost always fails. Of course unless you are offering a big incentive, like, in this case, giving something free on your website.
Can a TV be more intelligent, and remember these links for me? Probably not all, but some that I ask it to remember with the press of a button on my remote. It could later email them to me. Or it could publish it to some repository which I can lookup by going to http://my.tv… or something. This would help both the users and the advertisers. The system could publish metrics of how many links/ads I ask my TV to remember, which at an aggregate level, would be a very good metric for a TV ad.
Some food for thought…
For consumer products, TV ads still work because when you enter a store after watching as ad, these products hit you on the face and you remember it. But with TV ads of internet sites, it isn’t the case. When you open the browser, you have no list to select from unlike a departmental store.
Campaign of ibibo and zapak are good examples of what you said
Comment by Abhishek Goyal — July 4, 2009 @ 9:30 am