Life is Hard. Advertising is Harder.

Advertising is developing an increasing need to be entertaining. Gainging viewers used to be as simple as putting an ad on network TV. Most people were watching TV, and there really weren't enough shows to make the audience difficult to reach.

Now, not only do we have massive segmentation of the audience, from magazines to 500 channel TV packages, we also have an increase in power for the consumer. Sure they always had the option to change the channel, but now they can zip through them or zap past them all together with their DTV recorders. There is so much interactivity on the web that anything else hardly catches a second glance.

This makes it absolutely necessary to find new ways to capture the audience's attention and keep them engaged. Another challenge to this is keeping trust. When you are advertising energy drinks or spray on scents, it isn't as much of a problem. You can show something very comical, and people will remember your advertisement and your product in a positive way. If you have a more serious product, like car insurance for example, it can be a little tricker. Humorous insurance advertisements have been shown to capture the audiences attention. What it does not do, however, is establish the brand as trustworthy or even differentiate the brand from others, aside from the possibility of not falling into the "stuffy auto company" category.

In anycase, advertising is getting more difficult. Greater barriers are being faced to engage the audience and persuade them into action.

I love a challenge.

At least we don't have to keep watching those car commercials

It's no secret that our current recession has had a dramatic impact on the auto industry. We have seen companies teetering on the edge of destruction, we have seen the government loan these companies money simply to keep them afloat, and we have seen car lots close down.
While these companies struggle to make a profit, many of them have decided to cut back on their advertising. Of course, we know that advertising during a recession is extremely important (and it often helps companies to become the leaders of their respective industries once the recession is over). Nevertheless, many companies were spending massive amounts of money to build brand awareness. Their focus now shifts to building sales, and, as such, much of their promotional budget will be cut.
Some of the companies, which were bought by the U.S. government, now have the ability to back out of advertising contracts that were previously negotiated. This is because they are considered to be new companies now that they have switched ownership. Others are simply not buying advertising space like they used to.
One of the more interesting effects of the auto industry's drop in advertising is in broadcast. Their decline in broadcast advertising has left a massive void to fill. This fact coupled with the 20% decline in rates for broadcast advertising since 2007 has brought local businesses to invest in broadcast ads. This will most likely benefit the local businesses more than the broadcast stations, however, because it takes a lot of local businesses to make up for auto dealers that advertised with them in the past.