All attention that consumers give to advertising comes at a cost. The easiest measure is how much time a consumer spends with advertising vs. the consumer's actual goal of content consumption.
Just to get ahead of it, please don't tell me that some consumers like highly relevant or high quality advertising. Sure, the Old Spice Man is great, but is he so great that you'd like to stop
watching the show you were immersed in to see the new advertisement? Don't be ridiculous.
If this was even remotely true, then cable companies could just put advertisements in the
on-demand section and people could just go find and consume all those advertisements that they love so much. Or even better, why don't we stop movies at various points for some advertisements -- I
mean, of course, only for the really good ones that people are going to like. For that matter, DVD sets of "24" should include all the advertisements that people really liked that ran during
the season, maybe with some cool "behind the scenes, making of the commercial" specials.
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The reason movie theaters and DVD sets don't interrupt their audiences with advertising
(even the really good stuff they showed during the Super Bowl) is because people would ask for their money back. And there it is: People are willing to pay money for enjoyment of content without
advertising.
With the "iTunes-ification" of all content (micropayments for microcontent), people who have more money than time, or at least value their time at a greater rate than
advertisers are willing to pay content producers, are increasingly being given the choice to pay for advertising-free content. In effect, consumers are given the option to
"outbid" advertisers for their own attention.
While it's true that not everyone will make this choice, those with the most disposable income or the most hectic
schedules will increasingly opt out of advertising experiences. And these are two groups advertisers are very interested in. So what advertisers will find is that they are not bidding against other
advertisers for marketing reach, they are in fact bidding against the very consumers they are looking to reach.
And with all this new competition for consumer attention, and a significant
decrease in the supply of attention to advertising overall, advertising is likely to see sharp increases in the price of quality consumer attention. Sure, advertisers will still be able to buy 50
billion impressions on various faceless Web sites, but the quality of attention received from such methods will simply continue to decrease.
In the end, advertisers will pay more for quality
consumer attention, because it is the price consumers will set in the market for their own attention. It will be really interesting to watch what content consumers value enough to pay for, and what
content they do not. A good sign that a publisher can be effective for an advertiser is if that publisher produces content consumers would pay for, but instead can offer free
with the right advertising support. This could be a test every advertiser should consider -- because soon they may have to.
Feel free to tell me I am wrong on Twitter @joemarchese or in the comments on the Spin board.