A reather new
concept surfacing today, with the large amounts of two-way communication capabilities. As we all know, traditional advertisment is a concept based on one-way communication. Be it television or magazines, these forms of advertisment are not very
cost effective. Even on the Internet, advertisment has largely been in the pseudo-one-way form of
banners, with the added possibility of being able to click on the banner for more information.
Today, there's a new paradigm in advertisment. Some companies have already explored it and they're starting to get effective. One of the pioneers in large-scale interactive advertising is the cellular phone maker Nokia with their Nokia Game. Prior to the launch of the film A.I., there was a huge interactive network of websites, e-mail lists and a fictional story to tie it all together. These two games had one thing in common, they were very, very cost effective. The Nokia Game was very widely described in various magazines and newspapers as an entertaining game and a novel concept. The A.I. interactive exploration was even more cost effective. Just with some websites and an automated call center, it attracted the attention of hundres of thoundsands all over the world. It too was described in newspapers all over the world, but the system was so subtle that the word-of-mouth factor was even more important. Also, it struck right in the middle of it's target audience.
These two examples are huge multimedia projects. But interactive advertisment is making its way into smaller niches too. The mentioned banners are changing, and aim to include more information on-site rather that relying on redirecting the viewer to another site thus improving the eyeball factor. With the recent arrival of interactive television, some companies use this feature to extend the interaction in the one-way system.