Startup Promises Cure For The Skipped Advertising Blues

Culture

from the the-magic-bullet dept

We can certainly understand the concern held by advertisers and TV broadcasters over DVRs, and their potential to bypass advertising. Still, the answer isn’t to fight against this trend by holding back the technology, which is bound to be a losing battle, but to make the most out of it. One idea that’s been thrown out there is inserting advertising when a user is fast-forwarding past the ads. The problem with that, as you might imagine, is that it has the potential to really irritate customers, though if the ads were made relevant and useful, it could be something worth exploring. The other thing that’s clear is that content needs to be untethered from the channel itself. Redistributing a TV show using other methods, the web in particular, open up previously unavailable advertising opportunities. A new startup is looking to satisfy these things comprehensively, offering to insert ads while fast forwarding, as well as manage advertising inventory on the web. Creating one solution for managing all these disparate forms of advertising should be appealing to companies that are still trying to figure this stuff out. But the true challenge remains of turning advertising into useful, inviting content in its own right. If all they manage to do is find a way to irritate people in such a way that can’t be skipped over, then it’s bound to be a loser.