Stardate 20010607.0600 (On Screen): One of the big reasons for the collapse of the web advertising model is that it's the only one where it's possible to directly measure effectiveness in real time. How many people watch a TV ad, instead of getting up for a trip to the bathroom? Hard to say. How many people clicked through your banner between 6:00 PM and 7:00 PM on June 4? 1479.
So I find it interesting that what is now apparently viewed as a particularly effective form of advertising takes away again this accountability. If an interactive Flash ad is running locally on my computer, the advertiser can't tell whether I ignore it or whether I interact with it, because it's all local. I sometimes wonder whether advertisers would be willing to pay what they do for TV ads if they had the same kind of direct feedback on them.
Of course, what the advertisers like about it is that it is large and intrusive. But that could have been implemented in other ways which still permitted monitoring. There's nothing a Flash ad does which can't be done interactively over the net. (discuss)
