Filling the real estate of increasingly large TV screens
From the Wall Street Journal today (subscription required):
Earlier this year, TNT tested a tactic that had a message from an American Express Co. financial-services operation appear -- just as Steve Martin faced a particularly thorny money decision during "Father of the Bride II."
..."Every nook and cranny of life in the media business needs to be examined for its advertising potential," says Rich Hanley, a professor of communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn. "It's all about the real estate of the screen. With the screen getting bigger, and the need for advertising increasing exponentially, it makes sense that the broadcasters would give first dibs on that space to the advertisers."
...And it's not as if TV viewers are unfamiliar with pop-up culture, suggests Marian Salzman, chief strategic officer of Havas Advertising's Euro RSCG; they've seen it in programs like "Pop-Up Video" on Viacom Inc.'s VH-1, or syndicated social-chronicle "Blind Date." New pop-up promotions, she adds, were "invented by, for and about" people between the ages of 20 and 40. In any case, most cable outlets have for months cluttered the screen with bottom-corner promotions related to programming. Adding actual advertisers simply takes the process one step further.