New Ad Tracking: Project Project Apollo and AdLab Updates
Perhaps it was because it was later in the day, but the session was moderately attended, with the room less than half full. Then again it could be that this session covers a topic that very few of the attendees deal with - TV and multimedia advertising. This session was really two sessions in one. The first half featured Pat Dunbar of AdLab and DiMA Group shwoing their project that looks at consumer response to new models of advertising for Video on Demand and DVRs. The second half had John Bosarge of VNU talking about Project Apollo, which could just as easily have been about the technology behind the world in Minority Report or the results of an Orwellian fantasy.
Pat Dunbar spoke about the evolution of the personalization of media and how the consumer is now an on-demand consumer. The growth of DVRs and Video on Demand, along with the computer and Web developments of the last ten years changed the way consumers act and react. Consumers are now in control, don’t like interruptions (commercials), want relevance, and rely on communities for new ideas. This goes back to my position that DVRs change us from appointment TV to watching what you want, when you want. Some interesting stats revealed that consumers watch 32 billion hours of TV through DVRs and 3 billion through video on demand (VOD).
The ad industry has ideas on how to deal with VOD, and it is just barely getting started with DVR based advertising. The new reality for advertisers is that they will have to improve the quality of advertising, work towards an opt-in model and come up with standardized ad units and measurements. The latter seemed to resonate with the audience based on questions asked after the session. For more on the program, as well as samples and a poll, see IdeaProgram.com
Project Apollo is truly fascinating, but you also have to wonder if it could ever come to pass if given mass publicity. Imagine a service that tracks every ad you are exposed to all day long, for years. It is a marketers dream, but a privacy nightmare. Evidently there are a large number of consumers out there who don’t mind and have already been scanning every purchase they make for years. The extension of this is that they will have a Portable People Meter that will have the ability to know what ads they have seen, when, and how many times. This is not just for TV. The device is worn like a pager (do people still wear pagers?) and it detects inaudible signals that will be imbedded in advertising and other media. It will know when you hear an ad on the radio, but it can also be put into the Muzak soundtrack at the Gap or your local grocery store, in the Cinema, over rich media ads online, in video games, and more so they know every place you have been and all the ads you have been exposed to.
It is then a great way to track buyer behavior over the long term and determine what advertising campaigns are working and where they should be spending their media buys. Their vision is to bridge the divide between media use and purchase behavior to be able to answer the question of did this one ad drive the consumer to the GM dealer. Since these questions can only be measured by following real people that are well known in their brand preferences and behavior, they will have a panel of perhaps 69,000 people. Examples were shown where the knowledge gained could make for large gains in campaign buys and increased efficiency within a given inventory.
This is all a plan (in fact it is the 19th initiative to build a single source panel), so it is not known if industry will buy in and do all that is necessary to pull this off. I also wonder about an idea that will require changes in creatives and broadcasts to 100% of the population in order to gather data from 69,000 panelists. If they do follow the plan, it will be interesting to see if anyone else finds a use for this inaudible signal since it will be out there in every store, home, and car.
