Not so many years ago it used to be that, if you paid the necessary placement fee, you could hold potential buyers captive – for at least a brief period of time. Advertising was all about predicting the best physical “place” (there’s a very good reason the term “placement” is used) to confront a potential buyer, and hopefully “grab” (there’s also a good reason that word is used a lot in advertising) their attention.
The choices were many for advertisers, and few options for retreat for buyers, other than to actively ignore the message (which does take energy). For example:
- Newspapers at home, office, on public transit or coffee shop (flip the page)
- Magazines at home or waiting rooms (ditto)
- Television in living rooms (leave the room)
- Billboards and public transit ads for travelers (look straight ahead)
- Radio at home or in the car (that’s a tough one to ignore, and don’t think advertisers didn’t know that).
- Placards and posters in restaurants, stores, on utility polls
- Direct mail to home or office
When I first started in marketing, it you could carry it (a newspaper) or it traveled with you (a car radio or subway placard) that was about as close to mobile advertising as one could get.
For the last 15 or so years, this whole paradigm has been changing. Dramatically. Advertising is now much less about predicting “where” a potential buyer is likely to be, and much more about predicting “when” a potential buyer is likely to be predisposed to favorably respond to a message. But “when” involves more than physical time – it involves something that advertisers rarely could predict before: “context”.
The “where” has shifted from a physical location to a mobile entity: you. Thanks to technology, now the media travel with you – smart phone, laptop, tablet, Netflix logon ID, Pandora … the list goes on. Advertisers now often know “when” and “where” you are with GPS precision and, because they have the tools to understand preferences and elements of your behavior (as first popularly laid out by Peppers and Rogers in One to One Marketing) messages can be personalized and tailored to a situation with laser-like precision.
There is, however, an escape for the buyer. It is the notion of permission marketing that gives the buyer considerable latitude in choosing who, what, how and how often advertisers may learn about and promote to the buyer. To a point, anyway. That’s where the not-so-little debate about privacy policy enters the picture.
Privacy comes at a cost: the more one wants to shield themselves from advertisers, the more they have to either pay for the services they use, or forego using part or all of them. The more willing they are to be held hostage (in the marketing sense of being willingly targeted) the freer and more abundant are the services they can tap into.
It is an interesting dilemma, and the extortion by permission far more sophisticated and nuanced than it was 20 years ago.
Leave a Reply