Monday, January 16, 2012

Magazine, TV Ads On Way Out

Traditional advertising for products – magazine ads and TV commercials – may go the way of the rotary phone, one researcher predicts. Seethu Seetharaman of Washington University in St. Louis said viral Internet campaigns, crowdsourcing, product placements and guerrilla promotions will dominate the marketing and advertising landscape. Product placements – branded goods or services placed in a context usually devoid of ads, such as movies, music videos, TV or news programs will continue to gain popularity, Seetharaman said. “I think crowdsourcing is only going to increase,” he added. Crowdsourcing refers to the open innovation model, pioneered by sites such as Threadless.com, where customers design and vote on new product designs. Given the popularity of campaigns such as the T-Mobile Flash Mob, one is more likely to see non-traditional “grassroots” campaigns get more noticed than traditional billboard advertising. “With the explosion of smartphones, these grassroots campaigns are swiftly recorded by people and then posted on YouTube in short order, which then makes these guerrilla campaigns go viral in a big way,” Seetharaman said. “This ‘guerrilla promotion’ style of advertising will blossom in 2012 and beyond.”