Christmas is only one week away, and I’m already seeing advertisements on high-definition TVs everywhere. No matter how big your CRT TV may be, high-definition TV is what everyone is looking to buy this season, but even that too may be outdated in just a few years. LCDs and Plasma TVs will soon be replaced by newer innovations such as laser TVs promising higher resolution and less energy consumption, or 3D TVs which brings a whole new experience to the audience. Although it is way too early to have an accurate prediction on the emerging TV technological trend especially amidst the current recession, but I couldn’t help but to wonder how these new TVs would affect advertising.
TV advertising is considered to be a traditional method of advertising that dates back to your parents and even your grandparents’ generation, but traditional is a sin for nerdy geniuses and geeky techs. The introduction of TiVo or what I like to call a “TV Genie” would grant any user unlimited magical wishes to skip your TV advertisements. Traditional TV advertisers took a hard blow from their loss of control over the TV advertising channel, but perhaps the anticipated introduction of 3D TV could save traditional marketers in an untraditional way.
First of all, here’s a brief description of how 3D TV works. 3D footages are simultaneously filmed using two cameras placed side-by-side, then the two images are merged together to be played on a TV. When wearing polarized glasses, each eye would see a different image which tricks the brain into perceiving the image in being 3D. There are also 3D-TV capable screens which are capable of displaying 3D images without the need of polarized glasses, but it is far from being affordable for poor bloggers like myself.
With 3D footages, targeted audience should be much more engaged than ever before. Just imagine the overflowing amount of TV advertising that you see today being changed into a 3D experience. The burger you see spinning on TV will immediately make you drive to the nearest drive-by.
Here’s what I think will be a new trend if 3D TV advertising ever becomes reality – 3D First Person Advertising. If 3D TV footage is really that enriched, then it can mimic a real-life situation. The next step would be to put the audience in the shoe of a protagonist in a TV commercial. For example, let’s look at a car commercial. Rather than showing a car that looks nice in a distance and can turn around corners smoothly, why not film the interior of the car while being driven to portray the audience as the actual car driver? If the advertising message is that the SUV is great for driving in snowy conditions, then display a snowy scenery in the windshield display.
