Ad-Ventures Online

For decades, the 30-second television spot has been king of the advertising jungle — the surefire way to shift that soap powder or boost that burger chain. But now, although not facing imminent extinction, the format is beginning to look as obsolete as the black-and-white TV set. According to ZenithOptimedia, an advertising buyer and research company, TV's share of the ad market in Western Europe peaked in 2004. Advertisers know all too well that digital TV's hundreds of channels and video-on-demand services have made it impossible for a handful of commercial channels to reach the enormous audiences they once enjoyed. Indeed, digital systems often come with digital video recorders (dvrs) that let viewers skip ads altogether. Meanwhile, video games, iPods, the Internet and other diversions are tempting people away from the tube. Europeans with Internet connections, for instance, spent an average of 10 hours, 15 minutes a week online last year, a 17% increase over 2004. Watching TV, by contrast, grew by only 6%.

Viewing habits may change, but the need to advertise products remains. Thus advertisers are hoping that "one-pipe" convergence will remodel the landscape. That's when a single broadband feed into your home will hook into one device that operates your TV, PC, dvd player, dvr, games console and stereo system. The differences between a TV and a computer, and between a website and a TV channel, will then start evaporating like pixels on a dying screen. Viewers will choose whether to watch ads and which way to watch them. How will brands vie for consumers' attention? For a taste of the future, tap the words Axe Feather into an Internet search engine. Any number of the results will take you to a page featuring an attractive young woman, clad in skimpy red undergarments, lying on a bed. Move the virtual feather with your cursor to tickle various parts of her body to get her to sneeze, giggle or writhe. Created 15 months ago by Dare, a London digital ad agency, for Axe, a line of Unilever grooming products for young men (called Lynx in Britain), the ad has captivated 15 million unique viewers who have each spent, on average, 8 minutes on the site.

So is this the future of advertising? Dare's managing partner Mark Collier boasts that the ad not only increases awareness of the brand, it gets young men to "engage" with it. When millions of people spend minutes, not seconds, with an ad, "that's a long time spent with a brand, and that's very powerful." Collier says digital technology is giving marketers powerful opportunities because it can build brand awareness like TV, let advertisers "talk" directly to consumers on a one-to-one basis, and do hard-nosed selling like direct mail. "It uses every step of the digital channel," says Collier.

And advertisers seem to be voting with their feet. Consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that online advertising spending in Europe, the Middle East and Africa will reach $91.7 million in 2009, an 80% jump from 2004 levels. The resurrection of online advertising is a welcome payoff for Dare, a pioneering and cutting-edge agency that Collier, the former head of London ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), launched in July 2000. Dare survived the dotcom crash and is now reaping the benefits of widespread broadband penetration. And that's making for competition. Not only have other digital-focused small agencies since opened their doors, but most of the large U.S. and European mega-agencies now have digital ad divisions. Dare's top-drawer clients include Vodafone, Sony Ericsson, Unilever and Diageo.