Screaming enough
It seems to me that the future of advertising is going to be a paid consumptive model where people somehow get reimbursed for viewing an ad. I think this because there has to be a limit on where people can advertise. It's everywhere, almost every flat surface. Because of cheap LCD displays and wi-fi, it's cost-effective to deploy these movable, dynamically updating billboards anywhere. They will continue to proliferate, along with their cousins, popup ads on web sites and Tivo, product placement in video games and movies, until we all scream enough.
I'm screaming now.
So why not pay people? Come up with some unique technology that will reward people for actually looking at these things. We're already seeing a bifurcated Internet, pay and free, where "free" means having to see ads. Some software is distributed that way already, like Eudora. There's a company that helps people make their car payments in return for putting a magnetic advertisement on the door.
Would you be willing to get free surgery if you let them tattoo an Allstate ad across your stomach? Half-price wedding cakes with a Betty Crocker ad iced on the top? You could apply this anywhere...how about a cut-rate circumsion in return for a lasered Trojans Ad? A free baby delivery if you agreed to name the child "Disposable Pampers."
I have a great big hairy patch of skin reserved for the people who put compulsory commercials on DVDs.
Posted on February 17, 2006
