There was a very interesting article in Wired this issue about both the business and technological perspectives of TV commercials' ever changing climate. The change is largely due to the fact that 20% of TV viewers are watching their favorite shows on something other than a TV. Let's face it, these commercials have always been about the ad agencies and not about viewers preference or interest. With viewers being able to watch their favs without watching the primetime commercials, via hulu.com, DVDs, and iTunes, ad agencies are having to get creative and find a new answer for their clients. (I do realize that hulu has commercials, but it is far less than four minutes of commercials for every five minutes of tv show!)

There are a lot of answers for this new climate… Business seems to be fighting to make sure that they can be in control of the ads online.Technology on the other hand wants to get more info to companies about their viewers, so that they can be more likely to have their commercials in front of likely customers. Advertisers actually thinking about what the viewer might want!

Of the people that I have asked, all have said that they would be willing to give info about themselves, if that meant that they would see relevant commercials, (and not irrelevant ones)! Wouldn't that be amazing? Log into google or something equivalent. Update basic info about what you are interested in, or considering buying. Then only find out more info on those things. Not about who will buy your timeshare, where you can send your unwanted gold, or how much a German towel can pick up!

The ending quote of the article is this… "Consumers don't hate advertising, they just hate irrelevant, disruptive advertising." I would say that Seth Godin's Permission Marketing would agree with that. What if you felt protected by advertising firms? Protected from interruption. That would be worth the permission that you would give them in return, wouldn't it?

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