Z Zapping and zipping works with VCRs, but not in reality.
z1. You can't avoid ads..
z2. Ads are not going to go away.
z3. Are ads worth all this attention?

Recent New_Ad Techniques
z1. You can't avoid ads.

When you record a TV program on videotape, you can avoid the ads by zapping (deleting) them as you record. Later, when you "Play" back, by zipping past them (using Fast Forward).

But, in reality, you can't avoid ads.

Even if you buy an expensive electronic device for TV (e.g. TiVo -with its "commercial advance feature"), or spam blockers and pop-up blockers for your computer, you can't get away. Even if you use the MUTE on your machine, or leave the room during the commercials, our society is saturated with advertising.

When you go to the movies, expect to see "product placement" embedded within the context of the story. Because this has been so successful with the 15-34 year old target audience who notice (and buy) these products, now television programs are doing it too, and perhaps soon, full movies.

Product placement -- outwitting TiVo --can also be inserted by virtual ads using software technology to add products into the viewing area, like sports programs which add the yellow first-down marker, or logos on the empty wall behind home plate.

"Television commercials have been disrupted by TiVo," wrote John Gaudiosi (in Wired, April ,2006, p.136), and many young men are spending the prime-time hours on Xboxes and PS2s instead of watching TV. So advertisers are turning to games to reclaim that prized demographic.

Virtual ads are still viewed by real eyeballs. Now at more than $60 million, the in-game advertising industry is predicted to grow to a half a billion dollars by 2009. One of the biggest players, Massive, Inc., has inserted ads in almost 50 titles: it dropped the Coca Cola logo into SWAT 4 and put Diet Sprite Zero vending machines in Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. Massive can also place updatable graphics on billboards -- each rented to the highest bidder -- in networked games like Anarchy Online....

So far, there's little sign of consumer resistance. According to Nielsen Interactive Entertainment, most games think ads make virtual environments more realistic. But then, the first spam emails you ever received probably seemed like an amusing novelty, too."

David Kushner in "The Neopets Addiction," (Wired, Dec. 2005) writes: "20 million kids can't get enough -- and neither can advertisers. How a virtual animal kingdom became a product placement paradise.... This seamless interweaving of marketing and entertainment is an advertiser's dream come true. "There's nothing on the Net delivering an experience like Neopets," says David Card, a senior analyst for Jupiter Research. "Kids aren't being harangued, and parents think it's safe."

Within days after Apple introduced its new video iPods (November, 2005), advertisers were planning to reach that new audience. Ads are everywhere, and advertisers keep finding new ways to reach audiences. Such covert advertising is "The pitch that you won't see coming."

When shopping in stores and malls, expect to see ads on floors. in carts, on bags, on closed-circuit TV. In restaurants and bars, ads appear in toilets and urinals. Advertisers call this "integrated marketing" and seek "to become part of the landscape of life."

Nor is this limited to modern America. As the Los Angeles Times (June 5, 2006) reported that the ancient sites in Rome are awash in "temporary" banners: "Billboards are prohibited in Rome's historic center, the site of ancient ruins and some of the world's most famous monuments. But a tiny loophole was written into the law a few years ago, and advertisers are enthusiastically taking advantage of it. They offer to pay for the restoration of a historic building. In exchange, the city allows them to hang gigantic advertisements on the scaffolding erected for the project."

"Almost every physical object now carries advertising, almost every human environment is suffused with advertising, almost every moment of time is calibrated by advertising." -- Twitchell, AdCultUSA, p.56

z2. Ads are not going to go away.

They will only increase in number and in sophistication. Anytime there's an audience, persuaders will figure out new ways, use new technology, to reach them and deliver ads to them. Television programs today are the primary delivery system for ads, and TV stations are doing everything they can to deliver audiences to advertisers, including new ways to blend in the commercials so you won't get up to go to the toilet or even hit the remote during breaks.

So, you might as well learn to use ads to your own advantage. Learn how they work. When you learn how to analyze (to take apart), at the same time, you'll learn how to compose (to put together).

Some students might ask, "By paying this much attention to ads, doesn't this accomplish what advertisers want?"

No. Persuaders want response, not analysis.

z3. Are ads worth all this attention?

Perhaps not. But, your mind is.

If you can better learn how to analyze things, to recognize patterns, to sort out incoming information, to see the parts, the processes, the structure, the relationships within things so common in our everyday environment, then it's worth your effort.

After all, you'll continue to see thousands of ads in the future. If you can use them to your own advantage, to help you become a better analyst and a better composer, then it's worth your time and attention.

"The simple fact is that advertising is too serious not to study. There is no point pretending it does not exist and no point thinking that if we hector it with criticism it will change or go away.... Although only a few institutions of higher learning offer courses on advertising in the liberal arts curriculum, there should be more, starting in elementary school with simple lessons in persuasion techniques..." ---- Twitchell, AdCultUSA, p..4

See also: Why Analyze Ads? (a serious approach) and Rent-a-Rhetorician (a humorous approach) | New & Recent

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