One of the biggest challenges marketers have today is getting distracted consumers to pay attention. They are using multiple tactics (including trickery) to reach them. I’m not sure I like it. What do you think???
Last night, while watching Parenthood (my favorite) on my DVR, I sped through an ad for a children’s support organization that featured the stars of the show.
When I “rewound” to make sure I hadn’t missed any of this week’s episode, I realized it was a commercial and continued to skip forward.
I then recalled that I had also been confused during the run-up to the election when I almost skipped an ad supporting Prop 30 (raising taxes to gain funding for schools) featuring the same stars.
I remembered reading a recent article called Target’s ‘Revenge’: Ads Appear No Matter How You Watch the Show that pointed out that in order to combat DVR ad-skipping, network TV shows are starting to feature their talent in branded spots to keep the viewer engaged.
And then, I started to think…
- What is the best way to combat ad-skipping?
- Is it to corral your celebrities into supporting what the sponsors and/or advertisers want to sell?
- Is it product integration into the show itself?
- Or are we making too much of a big deal of ad-skipping altogether?
I, for one, do believe that ad-skipping is an issue.
Understandably, TV advertising still hits the largest audience of people even if it isn’t highly targeted and even over 86% of TV viewers admit to skipping said commercials.
But, I think there has to be a better way.
Simply tricking consumers into thinking that an ad featuring your favorite stars is not an ad, doesn’t really cut it. (And according to this article Is Your Social Media Behavior Annoying?, many consumers agree with me.)
Now I just feel deceived like I do when I read an article that looks like editorial and isn’t connoted as a sponsored message.
Isn’t this the same concept? Tell me what you think in the Comments below.