Member Article

Shazam enabled Ad’s, the future of advertising?

It is interesting to see how advertising has changed and developed over the years. With the first television ad being broadcast in the US on 1st July 1941 and the first TV ad on ITV in the UK on 21 September 1955. Until the early 1990s, advertising on television was only affordable to larger companies willing to make a significant investment, although this changed following the development of desktop video allowing many small and local businesses to produce television ads for airing on local cable TV services.

More recently, ITV have partnered with Shazam, a commercial mobile phone based music identification service, that enables viewers to interact with ads shown on the ITV family channels by using the application to enter competitions, obtain additional information about a brand or download free music. More than 10 million users have the app stored on their smartphone in the UK and users will be able to use the app to interact with the enabled adverts.

Cadbury and Pepsi Max were the first brands to launch a Shazam enabled ad during the final of Britains Got Talent on Saturday 12th May. Cadbury’s brand new Unwrap Gold advert offered viewers the chance to use Shazam to win a London 2012 Opening Ceremony package as part of its wider Unwrap Gold campaign. Pepsi MAX’s new 2012 football advert ‘Crowd Surfing’ featured the option to use Shazam for the opportunity to win tickets to popular festivals happening this summer and unlock other great prizes, free screensavers and merchandise. The launch follows the success of a large-scale experiment at the Superbowl in America, where Shazam linked around half of the game’s advertisers to songs by artists who performed during the halftime show, car giveaways, and other additional content in its first major live network television event. It will be interesting to see who will invest in interactive ads following the success of Pepsi Max and Cadbury.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Katrina Brownless .