If marketers can figure out how to create effective advertising for the two-inch square face of the Apple Watch, it could herald a new era in the world of digital marketing.
So says Shekhar Deo, co-founder of EngageClick, a digital marketing and customer engagement company, in an article posted recently on venturebeat.com.
Deo pointed out that the flipside is also true: “If done incorrectly, ads on the small screen could easily cross a boundary between being helpful and being intrusive and annoying.”
The fact is that the more personal a device is, the more sensitive users are about watching ads on it. And the smartwatch is one of the most personal devices we’ve come up with so far, being attached to one’s wrist all day long as if it was an extra body part. Deo says “it will require a uniquely personalized approach to advertising.”
He noted how the shift from desktop to mobile advertising was a breakthrough in allowing advertisers to get closer to consumers, their needs and wants. He argued that a similar breakthrough will be necessary for advertising on the Apple Watch, because the device will “grab a considerable share of computing time” away from its parent device, the iPhone.
Deo argued that the small size of smartwatches makes it likely that advertising on them “will serve a supplementary role to augment smartphone ads, rather than replacing them. It will be more effective if notices on the watch are linked back to associated ads on the phone.”
He said that “the real utility of the Apple Watch involves its capacity for consumers to quickly check all their notifications, events, locations, and personal activities with a quick glance at their wrists, or by communicating to the watch directly through voice commands or simple touch interactions.”
“In some sense, the watch will then become a kind of alert center that notifies users about special offers they can access on their phone screens, such as discounts for oil changes just as they pull into the car dealership for a tune-up. Or, maybe it will be a lunch appointment notice that links back to a coupon for the restaurant they are about to visit.”
He suggested that health-based applications based on the health monitoring functions of the Apple Watch, being so highly personalized in nature, could turn out to the most effective of all advertising efforts. But with the launch of the Apple Watch still months away, he called on all digital marketers to get on the Apple Watch train before it leaves the station.