Friday blog question: What will digital TV's net effect be for advertisers?

By 2009, all television signal will be digital, whether you like it or not. (Read the story here.) So answer me this – but don’t bother answering them ALL, this is just to give you a jumping point to form an opinion here… How bad will this be for advertisers, who will suddenly see a massive drop in people watching television? Or Will this make for a massive boon in online customers, who don’t have a converter because Best Buy ran out of them? Or Since all of this is being done to free up bandwidth for cell phone companies, why don’t THEY buy me a new TV? Or Can you trust any government program run by a guy named, “Dingell?”

I think the degree to which the ramifications of this program are negative really depends on how well Dingell can get the word out. It will be an ironic case study to see what advertising strategies and tactics he and his team employ to educate the public about this important change. For instance, will TV ads work? Will Dingell rely on TV alone? In fact, this may be one of the few instances where television advertising proves its worth. Not to say that TV ads are not productive, but compared to other online and off line mediums and tactics there is considerable waste. In regards to the effects of this change on advertisers, I’m hoping it serves as a wake up call more than a nightmare. I am of the belief, like many others, that advertising and marketing is shifting into a discipline that is most productive when initiating one-to-one conversations as opposed to one-to-many broadcasts (like a national TV buy). With the advancement of technology in segmentation, persona development and targeting capabilities, I truly hope that more marketers understand that they can save themselves and their clients time and money by engaging with their targets and their targets only. Hopefully, this will help deviate from the assumption by some that “advertising” is synonymous with running a TV spot and purchasing a back-cover ad in the Yellow pages. - Chris Sietsema

There will be no shortage of TV viewers in the conversion. Most people who go out and get the converters don’t even realize they don’t need them as their cable boxes will do the trick for them. It is just another scary hype news story that is crapola! If anything it will have a brief boost to new TV sales. I call shenanigans! - Brian Alig

I think it is going to eventually be a good thing. By moving all T.V. to a digital format advertisers will eventually realize a lot more interactive features to advertising. This will likely include better tracking abilities and interactive ads. - Eric Kardesh

Its not actually to free up bandwidth, but to open up frequencies that were previously unavailable to cellphone / wimax / etc. Example, the 700mhz auction. Val

I think we should all buy stock in the companies making converters. People will starve before they give up their favorite TV show. Michelle Zimmerman Considering most people can get digital cable now maybe it will just increase cable subscriptions. Holly Ringerud

The entrepreneur in me, his name is Cletus, thinks this could be an opportunity for either the cable/satellite companies to begin catering to lower income families by offering a very low cost option to view basic channels with a feature-stripped cable box. I’ve always thought there needs to be a more “a la carte” option for those who might need 24 hour access to an all quilting channel, or scrapbooking marathon. Perhaps this will shed some light on how much the cable/satellite industry is riddled with monopolies depending upon your geographic location, which apartment complex you live in or whether there’s infrastructure in place for any sort of cable/satellite options. On the other hand maybe this will force people to read a book now and again, play more Hungry Hungry Hippos or even try to get to know their neighbors. Eh, never mind, that sounds like a lot of work. -Brian Renner

About the Author: Eric Reid

I am the Social Media Services Manager for Off Madison Ave. I've been with the company since 2006, when I was hired to do SEO, and link building in particular. When social networking sites started cropping up, at first I started using them to create backlinks - but they weren't the best for that, given all of the "nofollow" attributes. However, I did see the potential for all of the direct referral traffic they represent. Since then I've been actively pursuing both tactics for clients: Links that can help them for search, and social postings that get them involved in the conversation. It's about the coolest job you could ever get. ;)

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