Future of Advertising Film

Traditionally advertising film has been the crown jewel of all advertising mainly thanks to TV's predominant role in people's lives. We all love to bash for and against the ad films. Sometimes, I even talk to the voice over out of annoyance when heading to the fridge whilst the commercial break.

But now due to digitalization the film is facing some serious challenges: web is becoming the number one channel, cost pressure affects production and the life cycle is becoming ever shorter. From advertiser's perspective, the change is not just adding the clip online or providing longer, more entertaining version of the brand story. It could be something like this.

Or like this.

Or even something like this, Area's Krisse B2B targeted campaign which was awarded couple of times last spring's Grand One digital marketing competition. Is the advertising film remediating? Or is the banner advertisement using more narratives and  becoming more interactive?

Few weeks ago, Sami Kankkunen from OMD also talked about the emergence of interactive banners at the Impacting the Bottom Line with Media Services seminar. People are witty  in avoiding the ad banners, but interactive ad clips are more pervasive in nature. Thus they are more efficient and hopefully more enjoyable and entertaining, too.

During the discussion over my own class presentation at Aalto roused two important notions concerning the future of ad film. Firstly, there's nothing more annoying than psychedelic sounds out of nowhere when checking e.g. news site. Thus the activation of ad film should be under freedom of choice to some extent. On the other hand, people have accepted that the free online content and advertisement walk hand in hand. Secondly, interface development (read iPad) is a huge opportunity to educate consumers to this kind of advertising. Who could deny that watching these interactive clips is part of the user experience and half of the fun?

Thanks again for the great speakers at the seminar and all of those who came to say hello during the poster sessions!