There’s a lot of talk about improving advertising models to keep up with the rapidly growing popularity of online video. With so many viewers of all ages watching video, there are plenty of opportunities for advertisers, and certainly more than one model can be successful for generating revenue. Christine Beardsell of ClickZ hit on an element that is a must in any model: quality. She explained that ad quality has to be as good as TV programming for audiences to respond, but that audiences will “respond to that quality in any setting.” Chris Young of MediaPost’s Video Insider offered his take on what creates quality ads: advertisements must be “professionally produced material that bring the viewer additional entertainment with additional information resulting in an additional experience.”
Fox.com streams video through Move Networks, and recently on their site I was delivered an ad for Old Spice that was tied into a preview for Semi Pro, the new Will Ferrell comedy in theaters. In the ad, Ferrell was in character, with the costume, hair, and humor of Jackie Moon. I found the ad entertaining; it achieved what Young described as allowing “the brand and the user to take the journey together, with the tacit understanding being that more entertainment, not just advertising, lies right around the corner. It’s . . . taking the world of the original feature film, edgy television show or much ballyhooed novel and going even further with characters, situations, humor, drama, you name it.”
I have more to say about improving ad models, but for now I’m interested to hear your thoughts about ads as entertainment and what else creates quality advertising.
The word flip used to apply to the housing market. Not that it needs a new home, but allow me to consider flip in several ways.
I just flipped over to firebrand.com, but it is on a non-commercial break. When I ran across firebrand a few weeks ago, it struck me as the flip-side of the monetization discussion. And reading the current page, “when done well” echoes John’s remarks above.
However the other flip-side of advertising is that in my world of instant gratification, I generally want to proceed at my pace. While I may choose to take a snack or bathroom break, I prefer to keep the action going; I generally don’t want to stop for “these message”, for “a word from our sponsor”.
There is of course a flip-side to the flip-side. In the theme of instant gratification, there are times when I want the information which I could have gathered from the ad. Just as when you drive down the freeway, you are not really disposed to take notes from a radio ad or a billboard, so during a video program or television show, you are less than inclined to pull out your geeky notepad to take notes. But the punch line is that a streaming video program is on a general-purpose computer. It can remember for you, given the right prompting.
The HD Radio folks have added a tag button so that you can download the current song later on iTunes. Perhaps it is really something from the “opt-in marketing” playbook. Seems that a similar “opt-in” button would be nice in the video streaming monetization world as well. And a turbo “opt-in with viral tell-my-friends” button would be intriguing as well.