Forgetting the Consumer
Last month, ClickZ wrote about a new "digital billboard" medium called AdDiem from a company called Synovativ Technologies. The idea is that consumers will download an application to view customized content, and also get advertisers' desktop "billboards" - basically, a much more targeted version of the billboards that you see on a street or freeway.
If you're having a flashback to PointCast, you're not alone. ClickZ was quite enthusiastic about this, but I kept wondering, "Why would a consumer do this?"
Synovativ offers very sketchy information on their site, but it's just enough to make the idea sound pretty bad. Apparently they are going to provide the same kind of content that you can get from a customized Google or Yahoo! home page - without downloading software.
No compelling content partners, no extra functionality for users to make it worth downloading software from an unknown company... nothing but the privilege of watching ads. Which, by and large, consumers aren't terrible interested in.
Something like this could work, if the medium (the software) was going to offer something really compelling and useful to people who downloaded it. It might work if there was some kind of marketing push on that software, which doesn't seem to be present.
It's an example of a terrible tendency in marketing thinking - the idea that consumers are sitting there waiting to be marketed to, like some kind of inert objects that exist only respond to our messages. They're not. A consumer sitting at a PC is a person with their own needs and priorities, and an advertising medium will only work if it fits into the way they use that PC now, and doesn't interfere with the consumer's own activities.
Unless there's some other aspect to this that Synovativ isn't sharing, it sounds like an idea heading for a deservedly quick death. If the question for Synovativ is "why on earth would anyone want this on their PC?" there's also a good question for ClickZ: why aren't you asking these questions when you write about services like this? For a site that claims it exists to help interactive marketers "do their jobs better," this kind of puff piece is rather disappointing.
If you're having a flashback to PointCast, you're not alone. ClickZ was quite enthusiastic about this, but I kept wondering, "Why would a consumer do this?"
Synovativ offers very sketchy information on their site, but it's just enough to make the idea sound pretty bad. Apparently they are going to provide the same kind of content that you can get from a customized Google or Yahoo! home page - without downloading software.
No compelling content partners, no extra functionality for users to make it worth downloading software from an unknown company... nothing but the privilege of watching ads. Which, by and large, consumers aren't terrible interested in.
Something like this could work, if the medium (the software) was going to offer something really compelling and useful to people who downloaded it. It might work if there was some kind of marketing push on that software, which doesn't seem to be present.
It's an example of a terrible tendency in marketing thinking - the idea that consumers are sitting there waiting to be marketed to, like some kind of inert objects that exist only respond to our messages. They're not. A consumer sitting at a PC is a person with their own needs and priorities, and an advertising medium will only work if it fits into the way they use that PC now, and doesn't interfere with the consumer's own activities.
Unless there's some other aspect to this that Synovativ isn't sharing, it sounds like an idea heading for a deservedly quick death. If the question for Synovativ is "why on earth would anyone want this on their PC?" there's also a good question for ClickZ: why aren't you asking these questions when you write about services like this? For a site that claims it exists to help interactive marketers "do their jobs better," this kind of puff piece is rather disappointing.
posted by John Whiteside at 7/17/2006 05:34:00 PM
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