It's in an embryonic stage but it's possible that in the not too distant future many of the ads funneled into your TV will be addressable to you, personally – or at least a good guess at who you are and what you're interested…what's relevant to you.
So says Ad Age:
Rather than bombarding millions of TV viewers with the same ads for things many of them may not be looking to buy, marketers could in the next two to three years send different ads to different households — making certain, for example, that Procter & Gamble wouldn't have to pay for Pampers ads watched by a couple with no wee tykes and General Motors wouldn't have to show ads for its Hummer vehicles to a house full of Prius enthusiasts.
This march towards relevance and knowing who you, the recipient of the message, are and what you want is a theme of my new book Making Waves: Radio on the Verge, and it's part of what Seth Godin talked about in this blog yesterday.
Under the assumption that more relevant advertising creates a better return on investment, relevance will be the new standard for advertising, not the volume of eyes – or ears – who experience your message.
You see, the new unit of measure in radio, as in TV, will become the individual, not the rating point. Ratings will be increasingly beside the point.
My advertising will have to understand me as well as my Amazon page, my "My Yahoo" homepage, and my Slacker device do.
And, to paraphrase Seth, having more listeners will be less important than having listeners who care.