Over the past few years when I return from Xmas holidays I have made
a habit of keeping an ear or eye on advertisements that are clearly
designed to target Xmas shoppers. I hear and see so many ads that are
still targeting Xmas shoppers almost 3 weeks after Xmas has passed and
to be honest, it pisses me off.
Unless the advertisers in question are targeting customers in advance of the 2008 Xmas shopping rush, I find these ads to be seriously un-targeted and a waste of the poor advertisers dollar. It is the old school media channels such as Television and radio that are particularly at fault when we consider this problem. The famous song 'take the money and run' springs to mind.
What makes matters worse is the fact that, by todays standards, Television and Radio are two of the most expensive media channels for retail advertisers. The television and/or radio station will argue that the client had not provided new post Xmas content to replace the pre-Xmas advertisement and that they run with what they have as per the sale agreement. But still I cannot help but think that this attitude is a shocker.
The TV or radio Stations in question know full well that these advertisements will make no sense and are therefore useless to both the customer and the potential audience.
In the world of web 2.0 we have the potential to make advertisements for our products far more targeted using the likes of Google adwords. However, it is interesting to note that the later post Xmas ad content problem can also be an issue in these new online media channels.
Wouldn't it be great if services such as Google Adwords sent out a reminder to those advertisers who had Xmas related keywords in their ad content. The reminder would simply suggest that Xmas was over and that they advertiser may want to change their ad content to reflect this.
Google would surely have the technology to enable this fix. More importantly, Google would actually want to push it through (if they haven't already) as they desire to provide their clients with the most targeted traffic possible.
The TV and radio stations though? I think they will just continue to take your money and run!
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