May 21, 2009 Seguing from the clever Google search logos and their homepage fun to this one at left from “Ask”…I must “ask” dear readers…Who would like to join me in a childish, lip-fluttering raspberry on behalf of ad creep and product proliferation?
I mean, c’mon, really…selling off your own homepage search screen to blitz tomorrow’s premiere of Night at the Museum Battle at the Smithsonian?
PLEASE tell me this “takeover ad” bit is neither a precedent or even remotely prescient in what the ‘free’ internet and monetization of new media will one day become? This is evocative of the captive audience in ambient supermarket electronic conveyor belt ads, TSA checkpoint liners in gear bins, tray table inflight commercialism, and even the mirrors and air-blowing dryers in public bathrooms…
Dare I say we’ll soon be paying a price to make it all go away? Wanted: peace and quiet sans brain blitzing flash-n-trash…I can see it now, the various Zen stages of ad-absent subscriptions, sold for a premium to “make some, all, or select/irrelevant ads vanish.”
Yes, I know, we’ll be told kids don’t even SEE the ads anymore and that we will all desensitize ourselves to tune out ambient noise, and to some degree that may be true.
For example, I remember jumping out of my skin the first time my Shell station gas pump started yakking at me with ads and anchors blathering away on screen…
Now I don’t even flinch when that annoying ‘welcome’ channel from PumpTV starts polluting my personal space, already made unpleasant by the mere act of getting fuel to begin with, one of my most UNfavorite pitstops in the task list of life.
As Brian Morrissey so eloquently said, “The internet will increasingly resemble Times Square,” surpassing even TV in ubiquitous ‘always on’ messaging.
Should we have to see and hear ad noise incessantly? Can we just tune it out?
Two words. Leaf blower.
Try as I may, I have yet to succeed in making them flow into the ‘urban wallpaper’ of the mind. They’ve grown to be as familiar, obnoxious and polluting as ever.
Just like ambient advertising and product placement…
Related Posts
Media Memo: “Ask” Gargantuan “Takeover Ad”
N.Y. Times Premiere/Review of NATM:Battle of the Smithsonian
L.A. Times: 20th Century Fox Orders Up Movie Pact With McDonalds
Shaping Youth: Night at the Museum Becomes A Night of History Lessons (original film)
Visual Credits: PumpTV by Alan Diaz/AP Photo (“TVs atop gas pumps have skyrocketed since a handful of stations in 2006; now, three companies have placed more than 20,000 screens at thousands of stations from the Massachusetts Turnpike to Southern California.)
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