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.

Content this!

In the old days, it was simple. Advertisers paid programs for Ad space based on the number of viewers that particular program had. Now, however, technology allows the advertisers to track how many of the program's viewers also watch the commercials.

This works out very well for the advertisers because now they don't have to pay for people who are flipping the channel as soon as they are given a chance to reach them. What I find to be interesting, though, is how this effects television.

It is common knowledge that "content is king". If you want someone to engage with your newspaper, magazine, book, website, radio or television program, you have to have good content to keep them coming. Now, television programs will not only have to have good enough content to attract viewers, they will also have to make sure that their content attracts the type of viewers who will stick around to watch the Ads.