Paying College Kids To Watch Ads Online

from the realizing-the-shift-in-value dept

Here's another example of how advertising is starting to change. With all the choices in media out there, it's very difficult to really have a "captive" audience for your advertisements. If you want to advertise to someone, you have to provide them something of value in return - otherwise they're going somewhere else. In some cases (Honda, BMW) that means making creative and entertaining advertisements that people seek out. However, that's not always doable, so one company is running a service that pays students for watching commercials. They only get paid if they correctly answer questions about the commercials (to make sure they watch the ads). While some people may find this disturbing, these companies are giving something of value to the viewers and are getting people to view their ads. Whether or not this is really effective in terms of brand building is an entirely different question, however. Still, the company running this, BrandPort, claims that many students appreciate this more, since the advertiser is being upfront with them and not trying to sneak the advertisement by them.