Would you be alright with Advertising if it meant Free Cable?

I know when most people think about marketing and advertising, it is often met with a shudder or a cringe. This has gotten worse in recent years as adveritising has ventured online, and you now have to wait through an ad before watching a Youtube video, or listening to Grooveshark. My focus here is going to solely rest on video.

In recent years there have been more and more services coming out that make having cable or satellite less and less appealing. Things like Netflix, Hulu, and Tivo are legal services. You can watch tons of television shows and movies, whenever you want to. What a novel concept. Now these are only the legal alternatives, I won't get into the multitude of illegal outlets people use.

What does this mean for advertising? What about the networks? Well, it means that it is very hard to get an accurate account of how many people are actually watching your shows. I can't remember the last time I watched a TV show when it was actually aired. There was a time when competing with shows like Friends, or Seinfeld meant doom for any competing shows, but I would argue that is blown out of proportion in most cases now. Sure, for time sensitive things such as sports or American Idol, this might matter, but now a sitcom.

In recent years there has been a huge change in the way we collect information online. This practice, known as analytics, applies in numerous areas from how users interact with websites, videos, and can even include phone calls. Video is an interesting one, because they offer incredible data. You can find out how many people watched your video, for how long, what the peak interest points were, and more and more, you can find out basic demographic information. Our current methods don't tap enough into the evolution that technology has undergone in recent years.

With the introduction of Smart TVs, it seems to become more feasible for networks to begin to abandon the old model of collecting information, where there is a box on top of your television, which family members log into before they watch a program. Networks can now start to look at doing less intrusive advertising, that you might actually find of use to you. That's right, at its core, all advertising is doing is letting you know about something that you might want to buy.

Networks would have more in depth, and accurate information, which means that a show like Community might not have been cancelled in the first place. Think about your market that watches Community, isn't it odd that they are also the age that are primed for downloading? The out cry at the shows cancellation makes me think that maybe Community has a bigger fan base than was reported, and it was just the nature of the shows fan base, that old methods of ratings analysis just don't apply.

Here is what I think could be a cool turn. What if networks start to see that people are pirating their content, and that if they aren't, they are simply watching it on things like Netflix. All of a sudden, what is stopping the networks from simply giving their content away for free on something like their website? The network would be able to charge more for advertising, and also it would be more specific, so its a better experience for the user?

I think this sounds like an amazing idea. What if advertising wasn't obtrusive, and was for products that you were interested in? What if this meant that you got cable for free?

Leave your feedback in the comment section below.

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What I'm Listening to This Week:
If I Don't Come Home You'll Know I'm Gone - The Wooden Sky