Klick Communications

The early days of television advertising was far from subtle.  In the middle of a program, the characters would break out, turn to the camera and talk about, say, breakfast cereal, before resuming the story.

All the classic TV shows did it.  Lucy hawked cigarettes.  Andy Griffith did Grape Nuts.  This worked, for a while, until the talent revolted, or the advertisers wanted more direct messaging, and then was dropped in exchange for commercial “breaks” that were completely out of the narrative of the show.  Flash forward and you have 30 Rock inserting a tongue-in-cheek reference to their own brand integration of Verizon.

Subtler…slightly.  But Tina Fey sticks the landing.  This placement shows a mastery of the medium. 30 Rock has its cake and eats it too by working in the brand message as a build up, and delivers a knowing wink to a savvy audience as a punchline.   Epic win.

I bring this up as a way to get into Apple’s OTHER announcement last week.  Amidst all the hype for the iPad, Steve Jobs also showed off some of the cooler applications of their mobile advertising network: iAd Apple promises cool features, both for audience and advertisers, but the company is putting their customers trust on the line.  There’s no “Partner” to take a bullet if the ad network turns your iphone into a 1998 Geocities page.  It’s assumed that if you trust Apple, you’ll trust that their ad vetting system won’t sign you up for spam lists, install malicious software, or scream “CONGRATULATIONS! YOU’VE WON!” while you’re playing games during your board meeting.

So, can Apple pull this off?  Will they “Tina Fey” their way to a Win?    I’m skeptical.  Their closed network way of doing business has worked on a number of levels.  It’s kept the app store relatively sterile, much to the chagrin of open-web advocates, befuddled app designers, and persons with genitals.  The iAd network creates another gate keeper to get past.  Your ad may be compelling, delightful, and even fun.  But will Steve Jobs’ cadre of vetters dig it?  Furthermore, the latest version of the developers agreement prevents 3rd-party analytics.

So will iAd become another knock against purchasing an iPad?  I expect ads when I’m using otherwise-free services: gmail and television for example.  iAds make me wonder at what point, if any, I’m entitled to an ad free experience?   If I purchase the hardware, purchase the app, and pay a monthly fee to use the network, shouldn’t I be entitled to an ad-free experience?  Or will advertisers come up with such compelling content,so perfectly tailored to my current needs, that I might actually look forward to checking out these ads?

p.s.

For more on this idea of evolving media listen to the “New Media” episode of the excellent CBC podcast Age of Persuasion.  It gives an excellent overview of the evolution of advertising with the evolution of different media.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 19th, 2010 at 12:47 pm and is filed under klick blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.