Wikipedia which is known as world’s encyclopedia joins the list of entities which are taking strong action to protest against US state bills SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act). The Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales announced on Twitter that starting at midnight on Wednesday, January 18, the English language version Wikipedia (http://www.mensxp.com/technology/internet/3426-punes-gift-to-wikipedia-a-flickr-page-called-wikipuneri.html)  will go dark for 24 hours in protest of SOPA and PIPA.

Acts which are posed to come in power to stop online piracy and IP theft have come under criticism due to the hardball punishments directed towards suspected offenders. Websites found to offer pirated content, along with the services that they use, could be hidden from US internet users by being delisted on search engines and potentially on DNS servers themselves. These acts don’t hamper the right of freedom just of the US citizens but websites and surfers across the globecheck this for more details (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/2012115121928594335.html). Just for a point of view – if these acts would have been in action few years back like they are intended now, websites such as twitter, YouTube would have never come into existence.  In short Web2.0 would still have been Web1.0 till now.

So instead of being able to access the Wikipedia (English) data users will be greeted to a landing page which will have the message to inform them about the laws and a call of action. As of now this will be seen only on the English version of the site, while there is no official word as to how other parts of the website will handle the event.

Other sites will also go dark, including the popular blog Boing Boing, Mozilla, and WordPress and Reddit, all vocal opponents of the legislation. Even the popular game Minecraft plans to go dark. Fortunately or unfortunately Twitter has revealed that it will keep its server live during the black out while Google (http://www.mensxp.com/technology/internet/6153-twitter-and-google-fight-while-users-loose.html) and Facebook have kept themselves away from the protest.

All in all main aim of the protest from the Wikipedia’s point of view is to raise enough awareness amongst citizens as well as asking people to call up their state representative to block the bills in senate.

- Mitesh Kothari

So, what is it that we notice here? Pertinent advertising. Relevant words to a relevant target. Online advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry. So how does one justify spending so much, while hardly any of us click on the ads. How does a company like Google/Facebook even convince advertisers to team up with them? And why would a company approach Google/Facebook if it did not think that these websites could display their ads to the right person? That question is answered by the powerful search algorithms that Google employs, in order to display the advertisement to the correct target audience. Once we show a relevant ad to a person, can we claim that the job is done? Well. It’s probably just half (or even less) done. And that’s because displaying the ad doesn’t guarantee the person’s attention.

So then, even if you do have the attention, what do you do with it? In today’s world, the mind is easily led to the next ad or the ad below it. So it’s not just important to get the attention but also to do something to retain it. However, with the current barrage of advertisements that’s hitting us on a day to day basis, that’s a tall order. We were getting close to a point where real estate on screen was more expensive than real estate in a city. Then there was a point where the attention of the person was a more expensive commodity. And now we are at the position where retention makes earlier expenses seem like a pittance. I may have to work in the advertisement industry for a few years to actually suggest a solution to this problem, but here are some ideas off the top of my head.

The first idea is about creating chunks of ads, one at a time. If we wanted to market a product, we could create the ads in a sequential manner by sending out chunks of information in each ad. What if we create teaser campaigns that are published one after the other? This would have more effect and retention in the minds of the target. Similarly, one could employ viral ads (of course, no one can “make” a viral ad). But if it does catch on, then you bet there’s nothing that can generate as much publicity as that.

Take the case of YouTube. All you have to do is to open the website. And you can be assured that there is at least one video that is bound to catch your “attention”, be it about Bruno mars’ latest song or a documentary telling you how 9/11 was staged. After you are done watching it, 9 other equally fascinating options flash across your screen. And there, they have your attention again. Actually, they never lost your attention. But then, these are videos. They are visual stimulants. What about other, plainer advertisements?

What if we had small, light weight flash videos playing on the side on facebook and Google instead of just having long sentences in a rather small font and a logo to go with it? Would it retain more attention or would it reduce it further? And, of course, it is futile to deny the impact of captivating colour combinations. Even though Orkut is out of fashion today, its signature blue hue is imprinted in our minds. Notably, over the years, if you look at poster design or logo design, underlining has almost gone out of fashion. Darker shades and darker colours like black and pink (which used to be considered queer) are now in vogue.

Another way to work on retention is to leverage the latest technology. There’s now a new software called “adsight”. This software uses your webcam to track your eye movements and measure which parts of an advertisement are viewed more and which parts really grab your attention. Could we modify this software to use it to see if people notice the right hand side of their Facebook page at all?

Those are some of the thoughts that I wanted to share. Some time ago, the war in advertising was being won by people who chose the better colours, the wittier lines and the bigger fonts -but not anymore. With real estate (on screen, I mean) at a premium, with every company having unlimited creativity at their disposal, with more and more social networks coming up and more complex algorithms going into showing the right ads, in the end, it shall only boil down to who holds your attention for that one extra second.

By: Srinivasan Chockalingam, NMIMS, Mumbai