Those of you who have met me or read this blog know I love technology and what the future holds for us both in our personal and business worlds. If you have been to the ‘Future of Business’ seminar that I do with The Corporate Handyman you will have heard me talk about advertising to and connecting to your customers in the future, with social media and digital adverts that follow you on line and offline as a couple of examples, and that offline experience is getting real close.
Today I was reading one of my favourite blogs, BBC Technology of Business, I noticed an article on specifically Digital Product Placement, now I was expecting this to be about Pay Per Click, Social Media and Habit Tracking but this was more intriguing and discussed adverts to products being placed in films and TV programme post production. Further more it went on to describe a product placement in a Italian TV program where adverts for a Lancia car where added to on screen billboards, computer screens and magazines etc all post production (this allows for the advert to be changed in re-runs etc). Not an amazing feat but still impressive and worth taking note of. What was more interesting was that if you had the corresponding app on your Phone or Tablet it was actively listening for hidden cues in the TV program and when it heard them it would offer promotions to you on your device. Now that is a great, albeit it slightly creepy idea and to date requires the user to almost opt in by downloading the app onto you phone/tablet, but will that always be the case.
On a daily basis we are seeing apps becoming more and more entwined in our way of life, just looking at my phone there are a number of apps that are ‘always on’ Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, Google Now any one of these could do the same job that the downloaded app for Lancia could do. I also have a Sky+ app which allows me to set recordings on my Sky box remotely, an added benefit of Sky+ is you can skip the ads, not good for Sky’s revenues but if they could push you ads based on what you were watching…… Mash this up with your social profiles and you have killer placement advertising.
Take this a step further, and you could see shops sending out hidden cues as you pass them enticing you in, films like Minority Report have already given us a glimpse of what that might look like, but with the technology being used in Italy thats possible now.
Good or Bad, you tell me.