There Ads Are Just About Everywhere.

Earlier this week, Delta Airlines announced plans that will turn the boarding passes into advertising opportunities, or billboards, hawking destination specific businesses and products. An Omaha-based start-up, Sojern is behind this advertising offer, which is going to be adopted by four airlines in addition to Delta - American, Continental, United, and US Airways. Given that airlines are in such desperate position, mostly because of their incompetency, they are ready to try anything, however strange it might seem.

Now there is word that IDT Corporation, a calling card company is going to start using advertising messages on its pre-paid calling cards. Using technology from in-call advertising start-up VoodooVox, IDT will hawk marketing and advertising messages that are matched with their demographic profile. For instance, someone is calling Dominican Republic, an ad for airline would be piped in while the caller is waiting for his call to connect. IDT sells about 17.5 million pre-paid calling cards every month.

Given the razor thin margins in the long distance business, I am not surprised IDT is going down this path, but I wonder if they will use some of the fat CPMs from advertising to offer cheaper or near free long distance call. Now that would be cool, and perhaps somewhat receptive from the audience, who might get annoyed by ads intruding their calls.

These two examples make me ask the question: are we getting so saturated with ads that they will just become meaningless and lose their entire effectiveness?