'Get used the age of disruption," said Eileen Naughton, managing director of Google's UK and Ireland operations, at last week's IAB Engage conference in London. Sounds sort of threatening, doesn't it? It makes the old textbook's first aim of advertising, to get your "attention", sound almost quaint. In the future, we'll be pining for the days when we moaned about the number of advertisements in the breaks during our favourite TV programme or the number of advertisements in our favourite glossy magazines. There will come a time when we'll be nostalgic for the banner ad.

Disruption is a new buzzword in advertising. At its heart is the rise and rise of digital and with it programmatic advertising, which itself has as many definitions, each as long your arm. There were 20 different delegate sessions devoted to programmatic in Advertising Week 2014 in New York earlier this month. Basically, it’s mining data to zone in on consumers, to tailor messages to specific audiences – and the rise in consumer use of an ever-evolving range of digital technologies makes it viable.

Dublin strategy and buying group Core Media, which includes Starcom, MediaVest, Radical, Publicis Engage and Mediaworks in its stable, last week held a training day to bring its 170 employees up to speed with changes in the media environment.

Disrupt Day

Its previous cross-company training day two years ago was called Digital Day: this year it was Disrupt Day, digital now being judged as too limiting a word for all the various new technologies out there, according to

Aisling Blake

, managing director at Radical.

The idea was give everyone direct experience of the potential of digital communications – not least the power of your average smartphone. Some teams had to learn basic coding so they could use their phones to move a remote contol car, while others went haring around Dublin’s docklands on treasure hunts in which their phones were geofenced, with clues only appearing on their screens when they arrived in certain areas.

And everyone had to tweet. It’s easy to see how, once the advertising industry gets on top of the potential of new technologies, the way their clients communicate with consumers is going to change.

A recent “disprution” campaign from Radical was its “Bin it” anti-litter campaign for Mars Wrigley which saw the brand taking over the giant screen at Heuston station and programming it with a game that commuters waiting for trains could play using their phones. A leader board kept track of the scores.

It all concurs with Naughton’s closing comments at the conference: “We can’t predict what is going to happen in the next five years, or even the next five months. What we do know is that technology will continue to advance exponentially and mobile devices will be at the heart of it.”

Native advertising

While there’s a whizz-bang factor about much of this digital technology, native advertising is a quieter – maybe stealthier – disruptive approach to cut through the noise. Time-shift TV viewing sees consumers skip ads entirely as they watch when they want to, either on a video streaming service or by recording their preferred programmes, so what’s a brand to do?

Jamie Oliver’s native advertising idea harks back to product placement. His wildly popular cooking TV shows and books are only the tip of his media empire which includes a website and mobile app, as well as his YouTube channels, Food Tube and Drinks Tube. Food Tube had one million subscribers in its first five months.

In April he struck a three-year deal with Bacardi which sees the brand's products, including Bacardi Rum, Dewar's Whisky and Martini vermouth, popping up onscreen in recipes and demonstrations. Will every viewer know that Bacardi is the sponsor when he reaches for the bottle to make a rum cocktail? Probably not. It's now reported that Jamie Oliver Holdings is in negotiations with other brands for long-term partnership deals that could see their ingredients going into his recipes.

Meanwhile, TV3 announced this week that it had found a new sponsor for its new cooking programme The Lazy Chef presented by Simon Lamont. It's Purina Gourmet, a cat food; purely coincidentally, the brand also sponsors Jamie Oliver's cooking show on Channel 4.

Neither Lamont nor Oliver incorporate the moggy dinners into their recipes. That would be beyond disruptive.

Twitter: @berniceharrison