• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer, October 16, 2014

Cross-screen targeting. Cross-platform tracking. Match rates across devices. Omnichannel synchronization. And on and on. Most of the talk about advertising and marketing across platforms involves the marketers’ perspective. How do we track, target, attribute or create effectively in a fragmented world? Following the screen-agnostic, omnichcannel consumer is utmost.

Less discussed is how the consumer herself gets the most value out of advertising in a fragmented world. Sure, ad tech guys and marketers all talk a good game about crafting that coveted “seamless experience” for the consumer. They all recognize now that consumers are consulting multiple screens in many places throughout the day. All of the major retailers are struggling to revamp their cross-screen apps and sites so that I can do simple things like see my browsing history on any device or let my shopping carts follow me (even pester me with reminders) through multiple channels. I just saw a pitch from one ad tech provider for healthcare products promising to hit visitors to doctors' offices and pharmacies with geo-targeted ads that can echo in-office signage, brochures, and product promotions.   

And of course there are the increasing attempts to synchronize the ad campaigns themselves. Some TV advertisers are experimenting with mobile extensions of on-air campaigns, so that messaging gets echoed on a viewer’s device minutes or days after she probably saw it on TV.  

This is all well and good. Still, I find a curious omission in this new cross-platform obsession: the omnichannel utility of the ads themselves to the ordinary consumer. It's amazing to me that more effort isn’t being put into making digital ad formats conform to the ways in which we consumers encounter, recall and ultimately make use of the ads we actually do want to see. I may well encounter a game ad in my Facebook feed or an iAd in an app that interests me. But in most cases I am not at a time and place to pursue that interest. I am not quite willing to divert myself from my main task. In most cases, I will never remember later to follow up on the brand’s Web site. I am given only two options: click now or ignore and forget.

Why can’t I save the ad for later, the same way I do films in my Netflix queue or Amazon lists, or articles in the best-designed news apps? Why hasn’t advertising online figured out what the best retailers and publishers know: that I want to push the information and opportunities I encounter on one screen to others to conform to my personal usage?

Click-throughs are not just a primitive metric for measuring ad effectiveness. They are also a crude choice for consumers. In a multiscreen path to purchase, surely advertising can do better than give consumers a stark choice between ignoring the ad or having their experience hijacked to another place online. If we recognize that consumers are now assembling a rationale for purchase in a range of modes - casually or  deliberately and at many different times and touchpoints - then why shouldn’t they be able to move the advertising that interests them across those screens?

Here's an idea for the IAB. Instead of launching another “working group” to standardize the way rich-media advertisers can drive me crazy with push down format, how about creating ad format standards that are made for a multiscreen era? Why shouldn’t both publishers and ad networks find a way to make it easier to shuffle ads around the multiplatform ecosystem as fluidly as  Amazon follows me with my shopping cart from laptop to desktop to phone or tablet. Why not have a standardized pop-up function on display advertising that lets me push this message to a channel of my choosing? After all ad industry, you spent how long coming up with that weird triangular “Ad Choices” icon. Why can’t we have a real ad choice that involves deciding when and where you want to engage with that offer?

Shouldn’t the ad formats themselves reflect the new reality we hear lip-served by everyone in marketing: the consumer is in control? Figure out a way to put me in true control of the ad experience. The 20th century gave us mass media through highly controlled gateways on very few platforms. Interruptive advertising was the natural format for the way people engaged media. Fragmented, on-demand media in countless locations, situations and over a myriad of channels demands advertising that conforms to the way people now use media, not just the fact that they encounter it on multiple screens.

Rich media, video pre-rolls, native advertising – none of these supposed innovations get at the heart of the real change. You have just found more creative methods of interrupting me without acknowledging that I am actually using these media very differently from the ways I did even five years ago. Stop looking for new tricks for getting in everyone's way, and instead offer them a better way.