Adotas

Back in 1975, NBC launched a pop culture marvel: Saturday Night Live. For those of you who didn't see Dan Aykroyd puree fish in the Bass-O-Matic, there's Hulu.  That's the first DRTV parody I remember seeing, the granddaddy of a phenomenon that grows bigger each year.

Avi Savar, founder and CEO of Big Fuel Communications, has a lot of experience with online video advertising. In a recent Adotas article, he offers his advice for successful online video advertising. Number one and most important is that you need to tell a story. Number two, add an element of surprise. Number three, make them laugh, make them cry, elicit some kind of emotion. Read on for more tips in this insightful article.

Online video is the fastest-growing ad format in the SNL Kagan projections, increasing at a 10-year Compound Annual Growth Rate of 26% from an estimated $978 million in 2009 to $9.9 billion in 2019.  Most major media companies have not and cannot ignore this growth.

The direct response television industry has become more popular than ever, and the Discovery channel is capitalizing on it with its new show “Pitchmen.” The show takes you behind the scenes of the infomercial world by shadowing the best in the business - Billy Mays and Anthony Sullivan. For Tim Hawthorne, father of the modern infomercial, it reveals a world that he already knows very well. But he also sees it as a revolutionary way to blur the lines between entertainment and advertising.

While a majority, 52 percent, of executives plan to increase their ad spending on online media, that is down from 68 percent who planned to boost their online ad spending in the fall, according to Advertiser Perceptions. Online ad optimism has eroded, with 72 percent of executives optimistic in the spring and 76 percent in the fall of 2007.

To identify America's most powerful and enduring brands, look no further than the Fortune 500. In 2008, the top ten corporate titans were: 1) Walmart; 2) Exxon Mobil; 3) Chevron; 4) General Motors; 5) Conoco Phillips; 6) General Electric; 7) Ford; Citi Group; 9) Bank of America; and 10) ATT. In our innovate-or-whither landscape, you'd expect this august group to be master tacticians in employing the strategies that marketing gurus proclaim best. These days that's interactivity. But a tour of these giants' websites challenge that assumption. And occasionally induce a nice nap. 

Before Google, before memes, and before URLs were staples of both TV and print ads ... there were hyperlinks. The first time you saw them, you didn't much care where they went. The important thing was that they went somewhere new, and they went there with astonishing 14.4 modem speed. The thrill was discovery, and we all wasted hours just noodling around. Quickly, we grew accustomed to learning by clicking. We found favorite spots, and trusted that whatever was linked there was probably worth seeing. In online advertising, Adotas plays this role. You can learn a great deal by just clicking around here. 

For the past few years, interactive advertising has become for ad agencies what exercise plans are to overweight uncles: terrific ideas-necessities even-that we announce with a big splash, then later repeat with more hope than belief.

It's time to break that cycle. Be it resolved: 2009 is the year.

I'm hardly the first to suggest that Barack Obama personifies a sea change in American politics, but I'm in a much smaller crowd suggesting that "the nation's first" internet candidate's marketing strategy isn't quite as unique as we think. For one thing, Howard Dean tried out similar tactics four years ago, albeit with less inspiring results. But while Obama hardly invented new media, social networking or internet video, his campaign team used all of them with unparalleled mastery.

Even the much-lauded "informercial" seen by over 33 million viewers on a single night in late October is derivative of Ross Perot's 1992 program. But Obama's show was not only more effective, it revealed his team's deep understanding and appreciation of direct response advertising.

In August, Intel and Yahoo announced plans to launch Widget Channel, a programmable platform designed to supplement TV programming with internet-based applications. Intel will handle the Widget Channel hardware-a chip that enables application functionality in consumer electronic devices. Yahoo will oversee content, managing a Widget Gallery from which consumers can select personalized applications that display while they're watching TV.The blogosphere buzzed with this news for roughly three days. Since then, nothing. There are two basic reasons for this silence. For the public right now, Widget Channel is more proposal than product. While Intel, Yahoo and a prominent supporting cast-Comcast, ABC/Disney, CBS, etc.-toil tirelessly behind the scenes, there's nothing for consumers to actually play with. Second, until a deployable product proves otherwise, Widget Channel sounds like just another in a series of internet-to-the-living-room schemes.