As we move beyond ink and paper toward new interactive publishing forms, we should carve out some time to think about the future of advertising in an interactive age. Most of what we know about creating ads for print or commercials for TV doesn't really apply to advertising on CD-ROMs, interactive TV and the Internet, and most of the early advertising in interactive media fails because it applies the 1960s adman principles of Bewitched's Darrin Stevens to the 1990s Wired world of cyberspace, multimedia and the World Wide Web.
Traditional advertising depends on the intrusive image.
A pretty space ad on page 53 of Newsweek or a clever 15 second spot on the Letterman show pushes it's way into our consciousness, building brand recognition, market positioning and product awareness. Ads and commercials are unavoidable, the price we pay to read the news or watch the show, and for all the market research and Nielsen calculations, the actual number of people who see a particular ad is unknown and unknowable. By contrast, interactive advertising is perfectly zappable and perfectly measurable. And every time somebody views an ad, the computer knows. Creating a successful interactive ad is a lot harder than pasting a catchy slogan on top of a compelling graphic.