Interruption Advertising

There are just some moments in your life when for once, you just don't want to be marketed to. And for Greg Verdino its when he's updating his blog. In his marketing blog, he makes a good point about interruption advertising and how it sometimes brings about bad will to a given sponsor and media outlet.

We've seen that the most successful advertising and media company out there Google lets you choose when you want to be marketed to. And that is the model of the new millenium. With all of the tools that we have to bypass commercials (i.e. Tivo), with all of the conditioning to ignore that we've grown up with, we need to find times when people want to be interrupted with a certain ad.

A tool that I saw last night is really cool. It's called UpNext and right now only works in Manhattan. But its Google Maps on steroids and while it basically launched last night, it is addictive. I surfed around the virtual streets and buildings of Manhattan for a few hours last night looking at all of the buildings and finding out all of the restaurants and bars that I never knew about in my neighborhood. I was happy to entertain that there was a Cuban restaurant a few blocks from my apartment and actually clicked on it to learn more.

Interruption advertising doesn't work. It's an annoyance. If we click on it, its an accident. I read an AdAge article this morning about relevance. Why is Netflix blanketing the world with its pop ups? Sure everyone watches movies, but don't you think real movie buffs would want the 10 discs at a time plan? Why not advertise on IMDB, Yahoo! Movies and other relevant sites? As this blogger said, its virtually riskless in this online space where there's lower production costs and media buys are not as expensive as television. Take a risk, go out there and find a niche and appeal to them. Or else feel the result....Since by now we already know about Netflix and as they continue to interrupt folks like Greg Verdino, they may lose more and more subscribers.