That boring perfume commercial again, zap! Can’t stand that loud-mouthed product endorser, hit the mute button pal, and wait for 30 seconds. But it’s not just the remote that marketers fear these days. Two trends worth looking out for can profoundly change the way TV audiences relate to content, and how advertisers negotiate with content creators and channels.

Digital delivery of TV content has been slow to gain acceptance, but has far too many irresistible marketing opportunities. On the face of it, it is an advertiser’s nightmare. Digital content, passing through a small player that looks like a VCR, can be saved and screened for commercials. It's the commercial bypass! Two companies, TiVo and Replay TV are in the market already.

The second is virtual branding, or the technique of superimposing a brand name or identity into content as a post-production technique. Initially, it drew a lot of criticism because of the implications of a broadcaster manipulating what people believe is ‘reality’. One of the first to unfortunately experiment with virtual ad placement was CBS news, cleverly inserting its digital logo on a face of a building behind a news anchor. The effect of a virtual billboard would not have stirred the pot, if the context was not a news programme. But this was Dan Rather, an epitome of journalism reporting on the millennium celebrations from New York’s Times Square. The idea that news could distort reality raised a huge question mark. (The owners of the building went even further, suing the network for trespass!) More troubling was the blurring of the distance between editorial content and advertising content.

BLURRING CONTENT
For advertisers, blurring of information and advertising is highly desirable. Advertorials and infomercials are a good example of that. In this context, virtual branding would be a great benefit. During news coverage of a big sporting event, sports stadia could be branded with digital images appropriate for different parts of the country –or even the world. Products with different identities could segment their branding appropriately. Unilever’s Vim, for instance, is known as Vif in some parts of the world, and Cif in another. Beer brands in the UK vary according to regions, too. How convenient then if the scenes could be digitally altered to replace not just logos, but entire 'pack shots' for each market.

Despite concerns of image manipulation, virtual branding’s evil twin, blatant branding, is sometimes a bit more obnoxious. It is the consequence of advertisers being driven to a corner, looking beyond traditional media buys, and seeking to play a more holistic role in TV content. It began with product placement, where a character in a sitcom or a movie would reach for a product and practically endorse it by his/her using it. But we are now in an era of heightened ad clutter where the product does not simply sit beside the content --it becomes the content.

The fist experiment of an advertiser more or less determining the content of a program took place last year on the ABC network. The format was a day-time show called ‘The View’, dedicated to women. The show teamed up with Campbell’s soup for 8 episodes, with a ‘blending’ of programming and advertising that was more controversial because of whom it involved. Of course "The View" was produced by the network’s entertainment division, but was hosted by Barbara Walters, a staple of the news division, with other former journalists as co-hosts. On the show, people (including the producer) consumed soup and discussed the brand with the audience –something far more powerful than breaking away from the content to run a commercial.

Exhibit One: A Massachusetts company, Captivate Network has created a small, but albeit captivating network of Web content beamed at flat-screen monitors in elevators. If you have ever wished there were something more interesting to do in an elevator other than inspect fellow commuter’s shoes, the Web might be the answer. It delivers flight information, weather reports, restaurant reservations and traffic updates, segmented for different markets in its 25 city locations.

Exhibit 2: An ad agency Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos has just launched a campaign for search engine LYCOS, using animated video ads atop taxi cabs in Boston. The format is not very different from a banner ad, but it is the targeted delivery and the use of a mini-network of taxis that makes it a great experiment. The cabs will be tracked via satellites on the Global Positioning System, so that as taxis move in and out of neighbourhoods, the ads will change. This is not just smart targeting, but a way for ad agencies to deliver audiences and offer packages that are more accountable. Digital delivery it seems, is here to stay.

Now imagine these mini networks of elevators and taxi cabs all interconnected across a country, or crisscrossing an entire region. Whether you have a Vif, a Cif, or a Vim, whether you’re talking to a kick-boxer in Kuala Lumpur or a senior citizen in Seattle, TV (or one of its mutant forms) will not be the only game in town, unless it is part of an extended network. More appropriately, as in the elevator experiment going on, the real value to a content provider, and thereby to an advertiser, is the ability to leverage multiple networks.

People's use of information and of networks have been changing, albeit imperceptibly. Marketers grew up thinking one medium was antagonistic towards another. It was either TV of Radio. TV or the Web. The formats made people believe they were not compatible. But while we were obsessed with researching the medium, we forgot to observe our audience. People are quite adept at using multiple media for overlapping reasons. Soon we may not be uncomfortable with shopping on the Web and picking up news on the phone! A recent study by Zenith Media found that viewership for TV programme content was 15% more in homes with Internet access. The secret is not the technology itself, but in the content creation that acknowledges that audiences would forage for more information on the TV programme via the Web.

What is the message for content creators? Treat content as a versatile thing, not as something rooted in one medium. Whether it is advertising or news, entertainment or politics, consumers of information want to move across boundaries, multi-task, and interact more with the content with a remote control that will one day allow people to click on content as we do with a mouse.

If you’re a TV advertiser, that remote control (which will someday become a mouse in disguise) could be your best friend.