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.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No Subject Given
Christ,
I've been doing this for FREE for 35 years !
Who is gonna make sure we get paid retroactively for this ?
[ link to this | view in thread ]