A lot of different attempts have been targeting the advertising space recently. Tailgate is a new approach from London-based online advertising firm Fhlame which aims to change the landscape of customer-targeted ads by letting advertisers present direct ‘transactional’ advertisements.
What are transactional advertisements? They’re ads where customers are able to make a purchase directly from and within the ad (example on the right).
This benefits the advertiser in that they’re able to make the process of getting someone to look at the ad to reach their pocket for their credit card much faster and easier — resulting in a higher ROI and more direct sales. In the same way, this is the first time ads are presented in an actual meaningful way for the consumer and the fear of clicking on something to have 20 popups open up and clog everything doesn’t exist.
There have been numerous attempts in the past to shape the advertising business of the future, and a lot of innovative things have come out of it. It seems only yesterday that Bill Gross of Idealabs came up with the idea of pay-per-click advertising or Larry and Sergey got together in a board meeting at the Googleplex and decided Google was going to go the text advertising route.
Of course, only a number of ideas actually get somewhere, but the idea of transactional advertising does present itself as something interesting. If the aim of an ad is to make a sale, and something like Tailgate makes it easier and faster, then it’s only a matter of time before the idea takes shape and gets used by many — that is of course, unless Tailgate’s lawyers have already submitted their application to the patent office.
