Please Don’t Turn My TV Into A Smartphone

Remember the “year of mobile”? That was the five-year period from roughly 2007 to 2012, when industry pundits annually declared that everything was about to change because of the smart phone. Mobile eventually did come to dominate the marketing landscape, but the shift took far longer than anyone expected.

I’m starting to think we’re in a similar cycle with streaming — only the transition from cable to digital television has taken far longer, and has been far, far messier. I recall editing the February, 1994 cover story for Wired, in which we asked — thirty years ago! — if advertising as we knew it was finally dead. We opened that piece with a futuristic scenario in which advertising had changed completely:

Super Bowl XLVII, January 2015, Buffalo, New York: Half a dozen Bills fans huddle around a 40-inch video monitor in Jack Public’s living room, hoping the men in blue can snap a losing streak spanning the last thirteen Super Bowls. The group has been tense and largely silent through a scoreless first quarter, but when quarterback Jim Kelly, Jr. hits a deep receiver for a 45-yard touchdown pass, Jack’s wife, Jane, sends the popcorn flying and the Albertsons nearly choke on their fat-free Fudgesicles.

As the kicker prepares for the extra point, hundreds of marketing executives around the country crack their knuckles over…