Thursday, March 15, 2007
Ready-to-air advertising
What do you guys think about this concept of off-the-shelf TV spots that is cropping up these days? My first reaction, from an admittedly biased perspective having worked with large national and global advertisers was Yikes! - they're taking all the relevance out of advertising: with a templatized ad that advertisers can just tag their logo and DR info on, there's no room to target your audience and message accordingly. Surely no strategic advertiser would buy into this? But they ARE: today's article in the Post discusses Spotzer, a new entrant to the business, but other companies such as Cheap TV Spots and vertical companies like Dentists On TV have been at it for some time.
So, I put on my client-advocate hat, took a step back and tried to see it from their point-of-view...and I can see the benefits ready-to-air provides for smaller advertisers - which boil down to cost efficiency and quicker time to air.
Obviously there is a whole category of clients that would never consider this approach, and there is a category that could only consider doing TV this way, but I bet there is a fairly sizable segment in between that might fall smack dab into the middle of your target audience. And it seems that these advertisers might need to better understand the need for relevance in their ads in order to steer them away from ready-to-air and sell them on the value they'll get in an original ad.
For you Second Wind members that are working with smaller, local clients - has this been an issue for your business? We'd like to know...and, we'd like to help arm you with strategies to educate your clients on pros and cons of ready-to-air. We're always here for you and love to chat!
What do you guys think about this concept of off-the-shelf TV spots that is cropping up these days? My first reaction, from an admittedly biased perspective having worked with large national and global advertisers was Yikes! - they're taking all the relevance out of advertising: with a templatized ad that advertisers can just tag their logo and DR info on, there's no room to target your audience and message accordingly. Surely no strategic advertiser would buy into this? But they ARE: today's article in the Post discusses Spotzer, a new entrant to the business, but other companies such as Cheap TV Spots and vertical companies like Dentists On TV have been at it for some time.
So, I put on my client-advocate hat, took a step back and tried to see it from their point-of-view...and I can see the benefits ready-to-air provides for smaller advertisers - which boil down to cost efficiency and quicker time to air.
Obviously there is a whole category of clients that would never consider this approach, and there is a category that could only consider doing TV this way, but I bet there is a fairly sizable segment in between that might fall smack dab into the middle of your target audience. And it seems that these advertisers might need to better understand the need for relevance in their ads in order to steer them away from ready-to-air and sell them on the value they'll get in an original ad.
For you Second Wind members that are working with smaller, local clients - has this been an issue for your business? We'd like to know...and, we'd like to help arm you with strategies to educate your clients on pros and cons of ready-to-air. We're always here for you and love to chat!
Labels: ready-to-air, relevance
