Using rich Internet applications to take more advertising dollars from television

There was a fascinating article in the Economist last month about the economic effect of the downturn on advertising that I think is very applicable to anyone tracking the rich Internet application space. The premise of the article was that the advertising market in 2008 will be relatively robust due to a number of big ticket events like the super bowl and a presidential election here in the States. But there was an undercurrent throughout the article that television advertising is probably going to be hit harder than online advertising. Online advertising is a funny thing because no one has found the holy grail quite yet. Google does a great job obviously but the amount of advertising spend on the internet is still dwarfed by the amount spent on TV. But that's changing and the change may become more pronounced during any economic malaise as the Economist notes:

The internet's interactivity and wealth of product information make it the best means of generating short-term sales—whereas television is best for long-term brand-building. During a downturn clients see internet ads as easier to measure and hence easier to justify to shareholders, says Mr Kaufman.

So how can we take even more share from television? How can we leverage the internet to create some of that long term brand awareness to which television is so well suited? Rich Internet applications.

The nature of advertising on television allows companies to tie very closely with an ideal or emotion. Advertising on a specific TV show associates the brand with what that show espouses. People become attached to shows and indirectly to the brands that advertise on the shows. TV ads also seem to be much better at showcasing a different kind of lifestyle which makes the brand more valuable. Currently on the internet with banner ads and pre-roll advertising we don't get the same level of engagement with the advertising. Combine that with the fact that we're bombarded seemingly at random by internet ads and it's even tougher to associate a brand with something. Cohesive advertising isn't the internet's strong point.

But it can be in rich Internet applications for two reasons. One, the technology is richer and therefore more opportunities exist to create the kind of advertising that would benefit brands. This is both because of the audio/video capabilities but also because of the technical nature of RIAs. We can push data to clients, provide real-time collaboration and stay away from page refreshes that would ruin an experience. All that means that advertisers can control the experience all the way through and establish branding in a more strategic way. Secondly, rich Internet applications bring richness to a variety of touch points. We're seeing RIAs on the desktop, on mobile devices, and set top boxes/video game consoles. Being able to take advantage of the same technology on a variety of devices and platforms means that advertisers can easily customize the experience so that they can provide the proper amount/type of advertising for the device using the exact same property. The same rich Internet application should have an interface customized to the small screen and the big screen and using RIAs to build brands means you can provide the right type of advertising for the medium and know that the experience will be consistent; something that doesn't exist right now with regular HTML/banner ads.

TV still has greater reach than any rich Internet application but the internet has always excelled at allowing companies to segment the market more cleanly. RIAs provide that segmentation and also the technology to create very engaging, brand-building advertisements. Through rich media and rich data capabilities advertisers can speak to consumers in a way that both win. By using the power of RIAs we can start doing the same brand building advertisement that we see on TV and the internet can continue to take market-share from television at all levels of the advertising spectrum.