Siri Killed Advertising

Perhaps you're exaggerating to make a point but i'm not sure i agree with you. People will never completely switch from touch to voice commands for one main reason - privacy. Who wants to voice every little thing they do with their phone, particularly in public.

Visual stimulus isn't going anywhere. The fact is, people will always want to be visually entertained in some form or another, providing an opportunity to advertise.

Say you're right though.. couldn't we just adapt to making radio-like ads?

Hey, thanks for your comment.

I was exaggerating to an extent – but i firmly believe the future and effectiveness of ‘push’ advertising is limited.

I agree, there are instances where people will want to type due to privacy, but the point is, Siri is designed to make choices for you. For the user, that experience wont have a banner or ad message in sight. Suddenly, there is no room for advertising when you are searching. It is owned by Siri.

Technology like Siri is giving us a cleaner, faster route to get to where we want. Advertising that interrupts (ie TV, Radio & Banners) has no place in this experience and is absolutely getting phased out.

Visual stimulus is definitely not going anywhere, but space for advertising in that space is.

Your case for adapting radio-like ads wouldn’t work.

Say I am right, unless the advertiser offers real value to the listener, they will never have permission to serve up an ad during that experience. Take Spotify for example, they have permission to serve up ads because the music is for free.

For a platform like Siri to cram ads in there without added value are guaranteed to have users leaving to mass.

You're right, i don't think radio-like ads would work either because utilities certainly require brands to earn permission for serving up ads unlike traditional media.

I guess my problem with your original post is that you're implying that traditional advertising is dead and that the only way forward is through providing utility to consumers. This is far from the truth.

First of all, Siri did not kill advertising, advertising is still the only reliably effective way to grow brands. Can you tell name more than a handful of brands that have been built on the success of the tools they offer consumers, alone. My guess is that most successful campaigns that offered consumers something "useful" would not have been successful without the support of traditional advertising.

Sure, utility can be a great way to encourage consumers to participate with a brand, but it's certainly not a viable strategy for most brands and it's certainly not a "killer" of advertising. I read an article recently that was able to articulate this far better than me - http://mweigel.typepad.com/can...

Hey, thanks again for the
reply. 

I have edited the post slightly to add some context and clarity around some points that i made.

The original point the post was trying to make, in terms of Siri killing Advertising,
maybe a more diplomatic headline would have been 'Siri is the beginning of the
end for display ads to be part of the buyer journey'. 

What Siri has killed is room for advertising to be part of the evaluation stage of the search journey. Siri does the evaluating for you. Your choice has been made. Advertsing in that experience has vanished. That was my point i tried to make.

 
For the utility vs traditional ads debate, I never said dead, but, I did
say traditional advertising is under huge pressure to prove it's going to continue to be the most effective way to getting people to buy your product.

Look at what DVR has done for the TV spot? Look at what a good result for banner ad is... a > 1% click through? How are people really going to take in the outdoor ad on the highway when they are looking at their phone or dashboard or keeping an eye on the kid in the back seat?

Sure, there is job traditional ads do very well, and always will. They create awareness, they reach the masses quickly. How effectively they reach them relys on a good idea, but really - what happens when the media buy runs out? Quite often the message is forgotten.Here are some examples/.Cab company sends me an SMS when it is out the front.An airline alerts me when my preferred holiday destination is on sale.My sneaker tells my iPhone that i broke my record time.The clothing stores give me a free T because they know I spent up last time i visited.etc etc etc

Utilities give meaningful experiences. And meaningful experiences last well beyond the media buy. Sure, the utilities that give those experiences may need ads to sell them, but over time they will sell themselves.

It boils down to this;

Traditional advertising's biggest weakness is it treats people like an audience, and not like participating people. 

A utility is build around being completely people centric.