I confess it takes something special to impress me. Today, I was more than impressed - I was WOWED by what American Express is doing in their latest "advertainments."
Check out The Adventures of Jerry & Superman. The creative is excellent, and the execution is flawless. If this is the future of online advertising, then it looks bright and more promising than ever. I imagine it cost a small fortune to produce, but if this generates results, you'll see more companies willing to pop for the costs involved. Flash video is coming of age.
iMedia had an article today called "Will Users Ever Differentiate?" He was complaining that users can't tell the difference between pop-ups and video ads.
It annoyed me. He called users "hoi polloi" and wondered what it would take to get them to accept video crawling across their "precious pages."
My response is to give them something worth watching, and let them control the experience. It's simple. Creativity and listening to users would supply the advertising industry with some interesting lessons.
Great article by Nate Elliott today in ClickZ. He talks about video being a great tool that is being used badly. It's nice to have someone agree with me about this.
He reiterates how it's being used intrusively, without good creative, and without context. More folks need to pay attention.
Arbitron and Edison Media Research released a report on "streamies" E-Marketer reported today.
Seems that streamies spend a significant amount of time online instead of watching TV. (Or they're multitasking.) Streamies are a very attractive audience as they tend to be better educated and have a higher household income. Another nail in the broadcast TV coffin.
I-Media today reported the banner ad is still the most popular format with online consumers. They quote a study done by Dynamic Logic. Not really surprising when you think about it. They're the least intrusive form of online ad out there.
I wonder why people aren't using more rich media within banners. It's fairly easy to do now and can be remarkably effective. It can also be user initiated which makes it even more desireable. I'll keep an eye out for good ones and list them here.
As more people move to the Internet for live events, how do advertisers adopt to this new broadband world? Great article today in Media Post discusses "Cleancasting." Developed by The FeedRoom.com, this technique allows the ads in the original TV broadcast to be replaced by ads of the Internet sponsors of the broadband stream.
Wonder if and when the broadcasters - like CBS whose NCAA telecasts are being affected by this - will start having fits.
What is all this furor about streaming video over cell phones? There have been announcements everywhere about companies pursuing this "service."
Do we really think people want to watch video that way - especially ads? (Maybe porn at their desks during slow hours?) Be interesting to see how this develops.
Far more interesting - and indicative of future trends - is the partnership between major league baseball and Microsoft. (AOL wants a piece of the action, too.) Microsoft is going to "broadcast" MLB games to subscribers in their entirety or give people the option of receiving video "highlights." Sports have traditionally been the exclusive property of the TV networks and cable outlets.
MLB has been trying to expand its' reach, and Microsoft wants their Windows Media player and codec to be a de facto standard. This should be fun to watch and could portend good things for streaming video.
Rob Graham wrote an article today in ClickZ that gave me hope. He talked about three companies actually doing some very creative things with rich media. Popstick, Viewpoint, and Skyworks are the companies mentioned.
The key to their successful executions is interactivity. Wow...who could've guessed that?
The big news THIS week has to do with "full screen" repurposed TV ads. Guess what? People don't find them too annoying. Good news, you say. I say it depends on your point of view. (Unicast, the provider of lots of these ads, sponsored the study.)
The study reports only 28% of users found them annoying! ONLY 28%! Translation: 28% of 150,000,000 users equals 42 million. So only pissing off 42 million people is now a good thing.
Is there anyone out there who understands the potential of rich media?
Wired News today had a troubling story about software appearing that blocks rich media ads. Should this have been expected? Are these ads as annoying as pop-ups?
Once again, marketers, advertisers and publishers are jumping on what they consider the "next big thing" in online advertising. (Rich media ads are now over 40% of all ads.) Once again, they're not thinking about how to use the ads effectively. Once again, consumers are becoming turned off and pissed off. And to add insult to injury, lots of these ads are repurposed TV spots with no interactiviy or any other Web oriented purpose.
Will they ever learn? Stay tuned....
Great article today in I-Media Connection about the gratuitous use of audio. How many times do site owners need to be told that using audio - or any form of rich media - that's not user controlled is Web suicide?
Unless you're an entertainer or a rock band, DON'T DO IT!!! And even then, think twice about it. Nothing could be more annoying or intrusive. And isn't there enough of that stuff already?
I've been preaching this for years, but having Joseph Jaffe on my side doesn't hurt one bit.
We're doing a very cool thing here at WBC Imaging. We're working with a small advertising firm in New Mexico to deliver TV commercials over the Internet.
They upload the finished commercial to their server where we grab it and convert it to Real Media. We then re-upload it so the advertiser can view the stream and give their approval for the spot. Once it's approved, we then convert the original file to MPEG-2 format so the TV stations involved can download the clips and process them.
What a great way to use the Internet and streaming video! This has saved the ad agency and the client lots of time and money. (The whole process is turned around in 24 to 48 hours depending on how long the approval process takes.) No overnight delivery charges, no Beta tapes. Easy archiving to CD.
An idea that should be duplicated by others.