It all started innocently enough – according to Wikipedia modern advertising started when the ancient Egyptians used papyrus to make sales messages. Later, various advertisements for commercial products and even politicians were used in ancient Arabia. From those simple beginnings we are now headed for this: anything that can be used to deliver a commercial message to any human anywhere will become a panel for advertising.
How did I arrive at this conclusion? Seattle based Amazon.com today announced that it will offer a special version of its Kindle reader which will display ”special offers” and be sold at a discount relative to the regular Kindle reader. The product is named ‘Kindle with Special Offers’ and is priced 25 dollars less than an ad-free Kindle. So basically, Amazon is willing to pay you 25 bucks to view ads on your Kindle screen saver and at the bottom of the home screen.
To take a step back for a moment, let me tell you a story. A couple of years ago I went to buy gasoline at a local Shell station. You know the drill well if you drive a car: you pull up, scan your credit card, punch in your zip code, and then wait patiently for the gas to spill into the car. Then you drive away. But wait! This particular station had a video screen built into the pump. As soon as I began to pump gas – the video screen sprang to life with an endless loop of Shell advertising. There was no way to turn the video off – or even to mute it. I was literally held captive to that advertising until my tank was full, or I decided that I could no longer take it and just stopped pumping gas to get out of there.
Here is another instance of what I call ”forced advertising” (advertising that is forced upon you regardless of whether you choose to view it or not): I got into an elevator a few years ago in San Francisco and pushed the button for my floor. A built-in video screen then sprang to life with another endless loop of advertisements for a variety of products and services. I have to admit that at first I was intrigued and a bit entertained by the screen. After all – what else do you have to do in an elevator but stand looking at the floors as they pass one after the other on a display in the front of the elevator? Even so, after a few short moments I wished for an ‘old fashioned’ elevator without any video advertising.
Now we all know and are even accustomed to advertising in our everyday lives. If one watches television for example – you expect to see ads. Likewise with a newspaper and of course the Internet is awash with banner and video advertising of all types and descriptions – from single line text ads to screen robbing roadblocks that require you to watch 30 seconds of video in order to view the next page of content. We also all know that some advertising can actually be a good thing. Stuart Melling, a small business owner of webhost 34SP.com buys Google AdWords and other forms of online advertising. Mr. Melling commented, ”Targeted advertising can perform a service to the viewer. The ads can save time and energy for the reader by presenting relevant products and perhaps special offers on those products without the reader having to conduct lengthy research.”
However, the lengths that corporations are willing to go to in their insatiable quest for your attention is becoming uncomfortable.
Back to the Amazon.com Kindle announcement. Your attention to the ads which you will view every time you use that Kindle for as long as you own it is worth a paltry 25 dollars to Amazon. It would not surprise me if the new product is a hit and people purchase the Kindle with Special Offers at a rate many times that of the regular Kindle. Consumers are just getting used to seeing advertising everywhere. By extrapolation I predict that we will indeed soon see advertising everywhere – literally.
As you can see in the photo above, even today you can buy a refrigerator with a video screen built into it. One can easily imagine two versions of this fridge soon to be offered for sale:
1. The standard version with video screen that you control or;
2. The ‘advertising supported’ model which displays advertisements of the manufacturer’s choosing on a continuous loop. It will cost 30 percent less than the standard model.
So, which refrigerator will you pick?
About the author: Derek Vaughan is a telecommunications industry veteran and expert. Mr. Vaughan has architected the marketing growth of several prominent web hosting success stories leading to acquisition including Affinity Internet, Inc., Aplus.Net and HostMySite.com. Prior to his entry into the web hosting industry, Mr. Vaughan was responsible for online marketing at The Walt Disney Company where he marketed ecommerce for the ESPN.com and NASCAR.com brands. Mr. Vaughan received his M.B.A. from Vanderbilt University and currently serves on the HostingCon Advisory Board.
Credits: Photo courtesy of www.appliancist.com.