Advertising 2.0

Just found out about this awesome company called DoubleRecall. Its an ad mechanism which shows web users a small advertisement and then requires them to type two keywords from the ad before they can access content. I can hear the groans..."This is the mother of all annoying ad mechanisms; move over banner ads". But wait, this is so awesome because these ads act as backdoors to content which is otherwise premium (paid). Ever got annoyed with FT.com's annoying paywall? 10 dollars a month or something like that. But now, you could probably simply read a short ad and type in a couple of words and bingo, you would be through! This has got to be one of the most innovative ad mechanisms ever! We have all read about Web 2.0, but looks like advertising has finally woken up to 2.0. Read more about DoubleRecall here. And as GigaOm points out, you can check the ads being put to use at CNN Money - especially in the latest news section.

There are pitfalls for sure: The service would definitely generate much higher recalls, but would the additional amount advertisers get willing to pay, compensate publishers sufficiently for them to open up all their paywalls? Would the nature of this advertising be sufficiently clear to readers or would they just get annoyed thinking of it as an advanced form of a banner ad? And will advertising-crazy publishers (I am looking at you Times of India) perhaps misuse the service to interrupt reader access to even free content? We will have to see how this pans out, but I am pretty hopeful!