Firstly, a humble apology to those who avidly follow our blog in the vain hope that a glimmer of wisdom and knowledge may part from our parched lips so that the industry may flourish amongst the enlightenment that will no doubt occur…

As the distinction between the varied mediums become less and less apparent and the differences blur, the industry contemplates the future of advertising, including web. TV’s connected through digital lines have infinite rich media content, whilst desktops, laptops and handhelds have increasingly more available access to conventional TV content through mediums such as BBC’s iPlayer, Hulu etc.

This makes for an increasingly exciting environment and with the advent of accessible high speed broadband, the distribution of HD content is ever becoming the reality. In fact, the single greatest obstacle is now limited only by the bandwidth available through our ISP’s and the provision of high quality data connections.

We attended a conference/seminar last week highlighting the significance of TV advertising and Web advertising and the fact that the rules distinguishing each are fast eroding away as both are becoming a pivotal partner in any rich media campaign.

The possibility to truly measure the success of online advertising has really encouraged advertisers to spend vast amounts on campaigns that can be used both on and offline.

Viral campaigns are now a pivotal part of any ‘nouveau’ form of marketing and advertising. Jim Houck from Sapient made an excellent case of how ‘Brand’ should be a slave to the story, and not vice versa. Too many people are concerned about over saturation of their log, or their tagline, or colours. The hardest thing, though, is convincing clients that this novel, unconventional, avant garde method of viral advertising is a successful initiative. Once committed, it’s easy to prove success by literal measurement, but until that committment is there, we have a catch 22 situation.

The advent of high speed broadband simply means feature rich content and full motion video is now commonplace. We’ve already demonstrated this with a secret campaign we’ve spearheaded with a much loved brand (soon about that later, I hope!).