Interesting: Kindle Now Being Sold At Discount, Due To Including Sponsored Advertisments On The ScreenSaver

You pay $25 less if you agree that your screen-saver will be an advertisement, targeted, I'm guessing, to you, based upon your buying history.

It's an interesting idea. I think this is going to become more common -- TVs might actually be sold at discounts if you don't mind banner ads popping up on your screens every half hour for a half minute or something like that.

Because technology is increasing our ability to avoid advertisements altogether, if we wish, and we do, the future of advertising is going to consist partly of advertisers paying you, in the form of discounts and other inducements, to allow yourself to be advertised at.

The other part of it, as far as TV, is going to be back-to-the-future, as stars are going to be required to do ads that run on the show (like they used to have actors read a pitch for Chesterfields cigarettes or whatnot). Product placement isn't enough.

Everyone fast-forwards through commercials now; the only way to actually catch their attention is to do something that looks like the show, with the show's actor, and maybe in the show's set, doing a sketch aimed at selling a product.

Subliminal Advertising? It occurs to me that the only time I "watch" commercials is when I have the TV on in background, and am not really watching it, so I can't fast-forward through the commercials.

That's really the main time I actually hear a commercial.

I think a lot of people are like that, and so maybe advertising has to be tailored increasingly to that demographic -- the guy too inattentive to fast-forward or mute -- and make advertisements with cloying or haunting melodies and constantly repeated catchphrases to get into the non-watching person's mind subliminally.

I know that's what they used to do, and still do a little. But they decided about fifteen years ago they had to give someone a reason to watch commercials, and so for a lot of advertisers, the way to go is with well-produced ads with funny jokes or whatnot.

But if people are paying less and less attention to the ads, and you only get your message through to the inattentive minds more and more, maybe they just have to go back to that constantly-repeated-catchphrases and annoying jingles model.

I'm not saying that's a good thing. I'm just saying that's the only way they're going to get much advertising messaging in on me, by sneaking it in.

Actually... They're already doing this without any discount for DVD's and of course when you go to the theater. They won't pay you to be advertised at or give you an opt-out if they can get people to just accept this is the way it is.

DVD's really annoy me, because they often try to make it difficult for you to skip past the ads.

So: On the other hand, they might just start selling TVs with built-in ad modes. And you'd either have to pay them extra to remove that, or hack your system.

posted by Ace at 03:40 PM

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