Advertising or Content?

Last July, Fred Wilson wrote a post about tracking and advertising that made me think about what exactly drew the line between content and ads.

When I drive around in my car listening to the radio, I find the ads annoying. Unless they are about something I care about. Then I listen intently.

When I watch TV, I experience the same thing. For the most part, I fast forward through the ads on the Tivo. But if it’s an ad for something I care about, I slow down the Tivo and watch the ad.

I remember when TiVo first let people download and watch upcoming movie trailers, studios were surprised at how many people voluntarily requested to watch trailers—essentially ads—that they paid who knows how much to put in front of movies at the theater.

This is because if the product is right and the ad is informative, it can become content.

I experienced this today when I went to the mall to get my watch repaired. They said there was a pretty simple fix if I wanted to wait around for about 20 minutes, so I said sure and went to browse the rest of the mall.

I wandered into the Bose store, which is usually pretty fun because it’s basically a collection of cool high-end stereo equipment. It turns out that this one also had a little home theater demo room setup, with a little fifteen minute presentation that is, essentially, a big advertisement for Bose speakers.

But I enjoyed it. Because it told me a lot about their new GSX Home Theater system and gave me an awesome demo of cool music and sound. Apparently Bose is getting into the market for all-in-one home entertainment as well. They have some options for putting music on a centralized system (as far as I could tell, it had to be a Bose music server) that would let you play different channels of music all over the house, depending on where you had speakers (these didn’t have to be Bose).

Anyway, the point is that because the Bose presentation was tailored to my interest, was well put together, and entertaining, it was basically content.

I’m not sure I agree with Fred that tracking consumer behavior in what I see as increasingly invasive ways is the best way to target advertisments, but I do think that making ads relevant would be the ideal arrangement between advertisers and consumers. I’d like my ads to be content.