John Oldfield is regional creative leadership officer at Pirana Advertising
“It’s a rapidly changing world – especially the world of advertising as the pages of Campaign and a raft of marketing magazines trumpet. A recent article offered the thought that “traditionalists will argue that it’s the message not the medium, but when the medium is totally unlike anything that has gone before in advertising…” and so it goes. Traditionalists versus digitalists? Is it really necessary to be so polarising?
Digital is a relatively new medium, but it is still a medium. Any medium is the vehicle by which the message is delivered and surely that remains true if you receive a message on you
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Digital is much more than just advertising your message via annoying pop-up or mobile sms. Statistically, online banners are actually one of the worst performing digital mediums with extremely low industry average click-thrus. The reason is people like you and me hate intrusion.
Doing digital right is about packaging your message in interesting content that people willingly choose, rather than forcing it in their faces. That’s why a YouTube view in my humble opinion is much more powerful than a TV one. You’re sitting there watching The Big Bang Theory on TV but you’re really just looking at Penny when Bang!! An ad for Persil!
On YouTube you willingly click on videos.
I am annoyed however with the new YouTube ads that pop-up before the content you’re viewing.
I mean if your content was packaged as a regular TV ad, you’d be skipping an ad to watch an ad.
Yes. It’s messed up. My advice: figure out what you want to say, then package it into something that’s more interesting than a pop-up. And please stop looking at digital as if it’s another billboard or TV ad. It isn’t!