The Problem: Fewer people are watching adverts on television, either recording shows and fast forwarding through them or else turning away to social media.
The Solution: Create adverts exclusive to television that engage and entertain people and give them a chance to win prizes.
Many adverts nowadays are boring to watch and an annoyance during television programmes, leading many people to avoid watching them. As a result, advertising revenues for television companies are declining.
Yet it need not be so. I remember a period in the 1990s when I used to watch the advert breaks avidly, hoping to see my favourite adverts such as the John Smiths ‘would you like a flake in that love’. That was obviously in the time before youtube, where anything can be watched at anytime, but it speaks to a possible solution.
What if there were some adverts that were only aired on television; they were not shared on youtube or any other online form, just like newly released films (there would of course be piracy, but that doesn’t stop millions of people going to the movies each week), so people would have to tune in to watch them. Such adverts would have to be entertaining to entice people to watch, but that is eminently do-able by the creatives at advertising agencies.
In addition to creating great content, the adverts could offer prizes to viewers. This could be something as simple as if people Tweet a particular hashtag while the advert is on they are entered into a cash prize draw, or a chance to get tickets to a sold-out concert. Or it could be a more complex puzzle, where people have to watch adverts to identify clues and then send in the solution to be in with a chance to win or find where a hidden treasure chest of cash is buried.
In both cases people would have to watch adverts live and it would create a lot of chatter on social media about the company running the advert. It would also help television channels attract more live viewers by creating a bigger incentive to watch shows live, adverts and all, to be in with a chance of winning a prize and seeing the advert that everyone else is talking about. Indeed, it may get to a point where it is not just the programme being advertised in the schedule, but also the adverts that will be shown during it.
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