Musings on Advertising

How many times has one seen the old adage of 'too much of a good thing....' come true?

Advertising has grown by leaps and bounds in the past few years. So much so that people now when discuss ads (more so those from TV), they have quite a few options to choose from. I mean, right now as I write this while watching the cricket match, I just saw a series of 4 good ads in a row! The new Bajaj Platina DTSi and the Amrutanjan ads are really well conceptualised. The Amrutanjan one is actually quite hilarious!

Coming back to the topic of this long overdue blog update, a couple of years back, NEO Sports I think it was who started with the concept of ads during the match. This was by way of zooming out from the match and displaying vertical and horizontal ads on two sides. It was brilliant! I mean, you don't miss the match and the ad is right there when you have the maximum attention on the screen.

Neo Sports had just signed a massive contract with the BCCI and were creating a revolution of sorts in the sport broadcasting industry. This was by way of innovative ways to sell their inventory of limited air time. They soon realised the air time was not enough to recover the millions they were going to pay BCCI. Necessity proved to be the mother of invention.

But, as has been happening forever, this brilliant idea has been turned into a not so brilliant one by overdoing it! I am watching the match right now, and I see these ads zooming in and zooming out after practically every single ball! It is being so overdone that they have succeeded in making it a blindspot! Now hardly is the content being read or the brand advertised being noticed.

However irritating the ads would have been as it hinders your viewing pleasure, it really was a great idea to target the audience at the perfect time. Until they messed it up that is.