U.S. Senate: READI Act 2019 re-introducted

[sean at donelan.com (Sean Donelan)]

On Fri, 25 Oct 2019, Michael Thomas wrote:
> Ok, you had me completely puzzled by digital assistant layer. I'm not sure 
> apps might not be interested in competing for users: "This 7.0 earthquake is 
> brought to you by Allstate!"

I'll assume you intended a smiley emoticon.

Do not use interstitials, ad pre-rolls, captchas, etc during actual 
emergency alert information.

Since new people seem to propose it periodically, it turns out advertisers 
(and consumers) do not like their brands being associated with mass 
casualty events, child abductions and terrorism incidents.  High-quality 
(i.e. high-revenue) marketeers demand buffers between their ads and 
sensitive topics to avoid being branded explotive. That's why you don't 
see airline advertising for days or sometimes weeks after a major 
airplane crash.

Radio and television have learned this lesson over decades. The Weather 
Channel is very good at keeping ads separate from actual alerts. Even 
algorithmic and auction-based on-line advertising and social media 
networks are mostly learning this lesson, usually the hard way.

After the immediate disaster, marketeers do use geo-targeting. But even 
then, the better advertising agencies change their messaging in disaster 
areas.

https://adage.com/article/digitalnext/advertising-disaster-regions/310389
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/business/media/marketers-ride-the-coattails-of-a-storm-not-all-successfully.html


Finally, the FCC has been fining advertisers over $1 million for using 
official emergency alert tones and signals in ads to get people's 
attention.

The techies in silicon valley should learn from their marketeering
counter-parts on madison avenue -- keep your emergency alerts separate 
from your advertising.