Is There Anything Left?

Seriously...is there any real world space left untouched by now?

As advertising companies and their clients are getting more and more creative, or perhaps desperate, more and more physical, and even intangible areas are being mined for advertising space. I can't say that I blame either one of them, to be honest. I love the look of a minor league ballpark outfield wall covered in advertisements. Some of the major league parks were able to do it and still keep the integrity of the park intact, as well.

Even NASCAR now, its not enough to have one car with one paint scheme, you have several, more than likely each with a different major sponsor. Plus, I know most of the sponsors that have the business card size ads on the cars are actually NASCAR sponsors, but are they even worth it? They're impossible to read.

I was fine with still shot ads at my movie theatre, but who's idea was it to put actual moving commercials before movies a few years back? Again, did anyone join the National Guard because they saw the commercial before watching the latest fart and dick joke masterpiece? Doubt it.

As for the intangible, you've got stadium and concert hall names, tour names, bowl games, golf tournaments and such. Sporting events themselves, I can understand, because more often than not, that particular company has something to do with the actual presence of said event. But can anyone honestly say they bought a F150 because they went to a Detroit Lions game at Ford Field? Were you unaware of Ford before going there? Kind of useless, but understandable.

What's next, actual commercials spoken between songs by artists onstage? Infomercials between sets at Phish concerts? They've already got football and baseball announcers doing plugs at just about any moment, what's stopping Herbal Essences from paying Trey Anastasio to tell the unwashed masses about shampoo?

I think they're actually getting advertising RIGHT on the internet. There's been a fairly good paced evolution in what we've been seeing, and the annoying crap like popups or those flash game "kick the guy in the face/shoot the thingy" ads, do go away relatively quickly. Most social media sites have been able to monetize without tremendously affect the site as a whole.

Will offline advertising ever take a cue from online advertising and actually improve itself? I dunno. I hope it will, although the internet will probably take over everything at some point in the near future anyhow.

Thanks for reading....