Mele’s Musings

Is Ad Selection the Future of Advertising?

Imagine a day when you had more control over the ads that you see. I’m not talking about better ad targeting technologies that offer you more “relevant” ads based on your previous actions.

I’m talking about the ability to actually select the ads that you watch, and even offer feedback on ads you have seen which then dynamically alters the next set of ads you see. Think Pandora for ads.

Before you steal this idea, I am claiming Intellectual Property on it. If you like it, you can pay me for it. Unless someone already has the idea trademarked. Anyway . . .

For some time, Hulu has been offering users the ability to select the ads they want to see, and has found success in it, and Starcom (a sister Publicis agency) has endorsed “The Ad Selector” which allows users to select the ads they want to see. Now, Facebook is offering ads that allow advertisers to include “endorsements” of their business or service in ads sent to friends of fans. These passive endorsements - users do not actually indicate that they like the ad or approve of sending it - enable brands to leverage the voluntary activity of users on a website like Facebook.

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And there has been an explosion in data exchanges which sell ads to brands and their agencies based on the past actions of the users - customizing ads to users to show them products related to what they have recently done or seen on other sites. While users do not choose to see these ads, they can control the targeting of them through the sites they visit or deleting cookies - a sort of ad selection process from the back door. Sort of.

It seems to me that all of these solutions are circling around a potentially inevitable state - where users actually take a more active role in selecting the ads that they see via a combination of data and self-selection.

Pandora works in some ways like this system. Users initiate the process by indicating a musical genre or style that they like. Pandora has created a database in which music and songs are classified against various attributes, and sends likely matches to users based on algorithms using this data. The user then controls how the service continues to deliver music by liking or disliking certain songs and artists - and the service adjusts on the fly.

What if we could offer the same system to consumers? Facebook is already getting us used to liking and disliking things via the “like button.” How much of a stretch is it to add a technology like this to cable boxes and digital online ads? If it was as simple as checking a box or clicking a button, you can bet people would do it if they really had control.

What would the implications be for the advertising world?

First, ads would probably get better. If users voted en masse, we wouldn’t rely on survey data months after an ad runs to tell us whether or not it worked or users liked it - we’d have the data right away. And even better than a click-through rate, we would know how users felt about the ad, not just if they acted on it. Ad agencies and brands would be forced to react to this immediate feedback and make their ads better.

Second, consumers would probably like advertising a lot more. Not only would ads get better, user control would bring more satisfaction - at least we assume. If users were able to control the ads they see, and have ads tailored to what they have specifically indicated, we can assume they might not mind advertising so much. Some of the data around ad selection supports that.

Wow. Better ads AND a receptive audience. Sounds customer centric. Sounds like an improvement. Heck, based on where technology is, at least online, it’s even possible.

I wonder who has the guts to implement it?

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