Multitasking as a Marketing Benefit

Simultaneous Media Usage By Consumers May Change Ad Approach

A new study, by BIGresearch, has found that Americans have begun multitasking in a new arena - media.

This is not really new per se but it puts an interesting spin on how marketers will need to modify their efforts to properly convey the brand across multiple media at the same time. Now, I don't advocate the thinking that the Internet and TV will become one big interactive mecca, but I do strongly believe that the two will become so intertwined that ten years, maybe even 5, we will look back and wonder what all the convergence discussion was all about. It will be a no-brainer.

It's not out of the technological realm of possibility for a marketing program to tie the two media (and others for that matter) so closely together so that "transportability" of message is ubiquitous. By that, I mean that the message follows you yet you are the one that controls how and where that message follows you. It might start with something you hear in your car on the radio that sparks an interest that you want to respond to but can't at the moment so you press a little button that sends this item to a central location that allows it to be retrievable latter from another "connected" device such as a screen on your fridge, your computer, your phone, or your handheld.

With the WiFi, PVR and VOD, management and timeshifting of content will become the norm. It will also have to be so for advertising. It is permission marketing expanded exponentially.

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