What you would say is a powerful new trend in ads that has come along in the past year? Or, what changes might we see in advertising?

Homework from Andrew McLuhan’s Understanding Media intensive

The powerful new trend in ad is the breaking of the fourth wall. Always figuratively, but in its conceptual orientation its becoming more literal.

A few illustrations of this trend come to mind. First, Stories that include the viewer — the progressive insurance people were in a zoom call where they experienced the regular and frustrating tropes of “you’re muted” and scrambling delivery. Second, the tubitv superbowl commercial that began as a commercial and then turned into a menu scrolling, making many viewers grab their remotes thinking they had changed something. Thirdly, shift-perspective animation on lcd billboards. They now make scenes that look like a dragron from a movie broke through the buildings’ facade and other similar tactics that aren’t just a billboard but are an engrossing first-person action movie.

We will see more of this thematically and in practice: breaking of the fourth wall in video ads.