The world of advertising is constantly changing and evolving. The very first advertisements can be traced back to ancient civilisations in the form of stone carvings. French newspaper La Presse is cited to be the first who printed the paid ad in 1836, while the USA was the first to broadcast one in 1941.
With the rise of internet and technology, everything is changing exponentially, while advertisers are looking for new ways to grab your attention and money. That should not come as a surprise, the world of advertising is much more complex than it might look at the first glance and involves real science, such us physiology of advertising and top-notch technology to make things work in synergy.
Different marketing models
You will be truly surprised how many advertising strategies are out there! A whole series of articles is needed to cover all of them in details, thus we will mention only a few and briefly.
Advertising became a major aspect in capitalist economies in the middle of 19th century. Back then it came predominantly in conventional printed form and was primarily in newspapers and magazines. And yes, people still do read those. While the popularity of print media is at all time low, printed ads are still relatively popular in a form of leaflets and discount vouchers, advertising your local pizzeria or coffee shop, and of course tons of newsletters in our mailboxes. Outdoor and transit advertisements are probably among the most expensive printed ads. Build boards allow to go huge in size, while transit ads 🚌 do pretty much the same, but on the wheels. While all these ads have their own pros and cons, they share one disadvantage — it is rather difficult to target a specific audience (with some exceptions).
Digital advertising is arguably the most advanced and features the widest arsenal of tools. Here we have social media ads, search engine marketing, native advertising, video advertising, e-mail targeting — just a few to mention. Compared to old-fashioned printed ads, here an advertiser has almost the full control over the target audience, maximising the efficacy of each ad by targeting gender, age, location and other personal information you leave daily on the internet. Moreover, digital ads allow to broadcast content rich media via the combination of visuals and sound, so that users are no longer bothered with reading. And this is not necessarily bad thing, as we see advertisers trying to be creative and eye-catching, what often leads to viral ads. Remember Volvo and Jean-Claude Van Damme? That was a really good one. By the way, did you know the most expensive TV ad was more than $30 million by Chanel?
And maybe surprisingly, advertising on TV is still alive and doing well. Inarguably, there is a challenge as TV can now be viewed from various devices. No more can the advertisers rely on broadcasting their ads at a certain time to catch the eye of the right people. Of course, there are other tricks that can be implemented. However, a study by Karen Nelson-Field of the University of Adelaide has made a conclusion that consumers pay more attention to TV advertising. In fact, TV ads had twice the active viewing than YouTube and even 15 times the active viewing of Facebook.
Still, we live in the wold of ones and zeroes. What is more, we are rapidly shifting into mobile tech, meaning our smartphones are always with us and there is no way we can escape marketing offers. Even if you switch off the internet and delete all apps, you will probably get an SMS message claiming there is a flash sale in the clothes shop or that you have won in a lottery.
Consumers vs advertisers. The holy war.
Of course, none of us likes ads that pop up out of nowhere and start acting like a crazy Hydra — you close one but get 2 more instead. Quite annoying, isn’t it? For this reason, ad blocking has become a very common habit among the internet users. According to Adblock report, there were 615 million devices using adblock (380 million mobile devices and 235 million desktops). As a result, we have never ending war between the ads that are interrupting our favourite YouTube videos. Advertisers who want to promote their product, and platforms that keep losing their revenue because of the ads blocked. As the polls show, most users are not against the ads, but they want to filter out the obnoxious ones.
But what is the worst thing about this, is that media giants (like Facebook and Google) and other smaller services constantly collect your personal data. Ok, some might be fine with this, if it is stored safely and used to improve your life… Oh, wait. No. They sell all your personal data to marketing companies and building incredibly profitable business on that. And what do you get YOUR data that was SOLD? Exactly. Just a tiny bit more than absolutely nothing 🤷️.
Apparently, there must be a solution that will benefit both users and advertisers. The solution, that won’t be blocked by adblocker and reaches its destination. How to ensure that you give people what they are looking for, especially on the internet? It seems there might be a solution that starts to gain more and more popularity… 🧐
Welcome to the new era of incentivised advertising! It is designed with one important thing in mind — to create a positive feeling to the user, rewarding him for completing a specific action (from simply watching the ad, to a more complex engagement).. This could come in various forms, and most of us might even have come across it before, as in incentivized ads featured games, that are played to win a prize.
This what we are aiming at in Birdchain. Instead of wasting people’s time on ads they do not care about, our advertisers can reach and audience that is actually interested in their product or service. And what is even better — the user will get rewarded for engaging with the content. Unlike conventional advertising platforms, this approach helps to build lasting and positive associations with the brand by bridging the engagement with a gift.
Why should Birdchain be considered as a platform of choice?
Birdchain believes that placing the positive emotional experience of the user in first place, results in a deeper fulfilling of the brand’s needs.
John Chen, BlackBerry CEO and executive chairman, said: “We must own our individual data and be given the transparent choice to monetize or otherwise leverage it. The problem only becomes complex when organizations put profits before ethics”. Here, at Birdchain, we respect the privacy and the right to control what is truthfully your, thus we prioritise your interest and want to let you monetise your time and efforts.
Taking a look at history it is clear that various types of advertising work differently depending on who sees them. Yet, there is one common ground, with the internet in our hands all the time everywhere, we do not want to be bombarded with ads every minute. We want to know that we are being shown an ad, we want to have the power to choose when and which ad to watch and to engage, and we want our cut of the profit. Incentivized advertising is the closest to a real-case answer and the trigger for the paradigm shift in advertising. Experience it yourself — Birdchain.