What Will the Future of Advertising Look Like?

A billboard located at the street corner is watching you. A camera is embedded in the billboard and a computer analyzes the people who pass by it. It tells the advertiser how many people walked in front of the screen, turned to face the ad and how long they looked at it. It reads your gender with an accuracy of 85%, so men and women will each see different ads.
Plans are already underway to detect different ages and even family groups. This intuitive digital advertisement exists, courtesy of Quividi, a French marketing technology firm.
In the future, ads themselves are engineered to obtain information on its audience, with the mined data immediately fueling message customization. Consumer data is a valuable commodity that will influence businesses and their initiatives even more than the present.
It’s already happening on the web. Internet services and media companies like Yahoo, AOL and Google are fast understanding that effective contextualization of ad messages requires the continous accumulation and usage of individual data.
Static print ads are no longer enough to engage an audience besiged by an empire of signs:

Holosonic, a US technology company, is taking the idea [of advertising] one step further. It has developed the Audio Spotlight, a system that fires a beam of sound onto a small area from a distance of more than 60ft. The effect, the company claims, is to “startle and entertain” pedestrians without being audible to anyone outside the zone….Can we expect 3-D soap packets and jingles beamed into our heads as we commute to work?

Image Credit: apwbATTACK
Advertising in the future will simply advance what marketers have always advocated: Firstly, ultra-targeted campaigns using customized messages that are highly relevant to the interests of the audience. Secondly, the launching of initiatives which build wide-spread buzz and natural viral recommendations amongst user networks and/or a broad general market.
The only difference is the improvement of both strategies by using new technologies which enhance the visibility, portability and impact of messages. Ideally, ad campaigns must become favorable interruptions which pre-empt consumer needs by being exceedingly relevant. This is the ultimate result of an architecture which collects/analyzes consumer behavior through the timeline plotting of individual data nodals.
The success of viral videos online suggests that a new advertising paradigm is here. And it inevitably involves user-generated media. Businesses must understand that their brands and messages can be shaped into successes by the participation of their audience. A campaign will have to create avenues for consumer involvement. Absolute control is no longer unnecessary.
Reverse engineer the future and we’ll see that businesses/entrepreneurs should now start to keep abreast of developments in new technologies/social channels that will help them understand their audience. Consumers will always be primarily attracted to messages that are highly relevant and interactively intriguing. Learn how to give them that.
To easily receive updates on new articles, subscribe to Dosh Dosh today.