Don't Watch That, Watch This.


The news that ITV has developed a technology to embed advertisements into the uninteresting part of TV dramas is indicative of a desperate attempt to cling to a model that customers have started to abandon. Even if there is a lot of dead screen-space in ITV dramas these days.

People change their behaviour for a reason. The appropriate marketing reaction is to understand that reason and adapt accordingly. It is not to ignore their mindset completely and seek to impose your unwanted thinking on them. Viewers won't let this happen, of course, and ITV will have to think more about how to adapt their medium to their users' viewing habits rather than trying to change the way their users behave.

If they are to remain advertising-funded, then they must ensure that their viewers receive those advertisements that they want to see, when they want to see them. Not when ITV want them to see them. Like all broadcasters, they have to acknowledge that technology and choice means that it is the viewers (more so than the advertisers) who are now their customers.Times change and you have to change with them.

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