The Ad; and the Company it Keeps
Josh Chasin muses about the value where an ad is seen and then answers his own question two paragraphs on.
What indeed? What happens if the business of advertising becomes so commoditized that it no longer matters where or how you reach an audience, only that you reach them as cheaply as possible? Suddenly, the vehicle becomes irrelevant. Invariably, if you follow this to its logical conclusion, much of the money that has funded the creation of content for the last 150 years will dry up. If it stops being economically feasible to BE the Wall Street Journal online, then there will be no Wall Street Journal audience to reach elsewhere.
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Consumers have relationships with marketer brands, but also relationships with branded media content. The value of these relationships is embodied in the concept of vehicle engagement (as distinct from ad engagement.) The premise of vehicle engagement is that the job of the media vehicle is not just to attract an audience — like a watermelon attracts flies on a summer day — but also to engage that audience in a way that adds value, providing a halo effect to the advertisers reaching the audience within that content. If I am a loyal Wall Street Journal reader (or visitor to wsj.com), exposure to your ad in the Journal or on the digital version makes a difference in how that ad works on me.
MediaPost Publications Does Content Matter? 04/15/2009
The relationship with the brand directly effects the sales resistance a reader has when they are shown the product. Are they browsing through a street market in Tijuana or is a personal shopper demonstrating products in the store lounge while you are sipping wine and chatting with friends.
