Tweakable Ads Help Marketers Reach Niche Communities

News Corp.'s Fox has announced plans to offer tweakable ads that will allow marketers to digitally alter media content to reflect audience characteristics. The Wall Street Journal (via Lexington Herald) reports, "Tailoring commercials has emerged as a new goal in the ad industry, thanks to a plethora of media outlets and the increasing fragmentation of audiences."

While Fox's announcement signals a dramatic move for a major broadcast network, the real revolution is already reverberating across the mobile media market. Interactive TV on mobile devices offer an increasingly granular view of consumer behavior that will be used for micromarketing. The Dominion Post (via MocoNews.net) provides some good background:

There are currently 40 mobile TV services worldwide. In the US, Mobi TV has 20 channels and over 500,000 subscribers, using Sprint and AT&T networks. Some examples of popular television content available as "mobisodes" include Fox's 24 and The Simple Life. Screen presentation is approaching television quality at 15 frames per second (compared to TV's 25 FPS). And this content exists within a transactional context - viewers text in opinions or greetings, buy ringtones, vote in polls, etc.

Transactional data offers marketers with a new opportunity to fine tune re purposed video content for niche community targeting. Keep an eye out for a wave of interstitial video adverting delivered via cell phones and other mobile devices. And don't be surprised to see monetization of advertising content as an add-on, for-pay service. Advertising and marketing messages that are truly targeted to reflect the interests of niche communities will be viewed as value-added, and not interruptive or intrusive. CRM Today (via AdverLab) reports findings from a recent Yankelovich study that describes the top three marketing practices consumers want:

• "Marketing that is short and to the point" - 43%
• "Marketing that I can choose to see when it is most convenient for me" - 33%
• "Marketing that is personally communicated to me by friends or experts I trust" - 32%