Businesses have been taking cues from science fiction with new concepts including advertising in space and even in our dreams.
A Russian startup plans to use a system of tiny satellites to create brightly lit adverts from orbit, with a potential audience of billions.
StarRocket, the firm behind the idea, relies on the reflection of sunlight in space and aims to have its equipment ready by 2021.
Marketing expert Ron Tite, chief executive of Toronto-based ad agency Church+State, told CTV’s Your Morning that advertisers are stuck in a ‘clutter loop where nothing is standing out.’
“In that traditional relationship between advertising and content, the advertising has a role to play in that it subsidizes the content,” he said Monday.
“Just cluttering up the sky, I don’t know that there’s any real added value for the consumer. There’s more value for the brand than the consumer.”
The burgeoning space industry has other companies in the fold, with Japanese firm iSpace providing ‘marketing support for space content industries’.
Meanwhile, Dutch animation company Smack has created a concept, using Coca-Colas as an example, of what dream adverts might look like.
Tite said companies should tread very lightly in this proposed advertising space.
“Who knows what the effect might be, we’ve heard of acid flashbacks, I don’t want a brand flashback in 20 years,” he said.
“You would have to do it with full transparency and who knows whether it would work? I think some brands would sign up just for the stunt aspect, to be the first to do it.”
He said the test of all these new advertising concepts is whether it drives consumption or acquisition of new customers.
In response to all this additional advertising a U.S. Kickstarter business has raised more than $140,000 for its glasses that act as ad and screen blockers.
“It’s getting more difficult to distinguish advertising from content,” Tite told CTV’s Your Morning.
“These glasses are blocking out all displays. Coming up with technology that just blocks ads is increasingly difficult.”
