Physical World Analytics

From MSNBC.MSN.com Newsweek Is the 30-second commercial finally becoming obsolete?

There's lots of hand-wringing on Madison Avenue these days. Companies like Virgin Atlantic are concluding that advertising on TV is too pricey and the effects too difficult to measure.

They're also eying the inexorable advance of technology with trepidation. Digital video recorders, video-on-demand services and Internet broadband allow consumers to skip the hallowed 30-second spot like a crack in the sidewalk.

Accordingly, top advertisers are slowly scaling back TV spending in their ad budgets

Reality TV is now clogged with product placements. Marketing dollars are slowly fleeing from TV to outdoor ads and into the rising online ad networks of Google and Yahoo.

Most companies will soon target multiple, smaller pools of consumers—on TV, on the Web, over cell phones and, yes, even in hotel rooms. The key will be finding audiences that are interested in the product to begin with.

How is this done? How does a brand know when a consumer is showing interest in an ad? Is there a way to measure this? Yes.

It will be known as physical world analytics. Just like there are companies that measure web traffic, and TV viewing volume, there will be an industry that measures the "traffic" physical world ads generate.

Unlike web analytic companies that can decipher what IP address and zipcode a user is from when visiting a site, this physical world analytic company will be able to provide the cell phone number and location of user.

How valuable will this be to an advertiser? Will this have more value than a "click" from a search engine query? I think so.

What key element does this provide over a "click" on a search query. It provides a direct way to interact with interested audience, and isn't that the goal for every advertiser?

How does this start? What technology will allow this?..Stay tuned.