Google now offers click-to-play video ads.   The ads show a still image which the user can click on to cause the video to play.  .  It’s important to design the initial stills so that they’re interesting enough to grab the user’s attention and inspire them to watch the videos.

Here’s what’s really amazing about the program: Google doesn’t charge the advertiser to show the first image, and then they don’t charge to play the video!  They only charge once the user has clicked through to the advertiser’s website.

This is great for advertisers because they can get away with free branding.  It’s worthwhile even if the user doesn’t click through to the corresponding website.

It’s like paying for an ad on network television only if people visit the company’s website after viewing the ad!  With this great benefit in mind, it’s important to make that initial still image as compelling as possible.

At 10ton, we have become fans of a particular form of advertising that has a great deal of potential online: branded content. Branded content is an ad that draws your attention to the product, but provides an experience that’s more like entertainment. What makes branded content different?

• People can pass it along to their friends. The current buzzword for this phenomenon, a term which we’re not too enamored with, is going viral. The best way to improve the odds of this happening is to make your ad as entertaining as possible.

What does branded content look like? It can be anything from a short video to a whole online TV network. Your Perfect Girl is branded content, promoting a dating site. Bud.tv is a whole network of branded content, consisting of online shows designed to appeal to beer drinkers. A new site, Get the Glass is a 3d milk themed video game for kids.

In my next post I will go further into why branded content works, and why the Internet is the perfect venue for this hybrid form of advertising.

Google recently launched a series of video ads, which I first saw on LinkedIn, a business social network that now features video advertising throughout the site.

This ad has a homemade look to it, as if a bunch of Google engineers made it up and shot it right in their cubicles. It features a bunch of evil puppets that attempt to deliver spam into another puppet’s Gmail account, meeting their untimely doom at the hands of a giant pair of scissors. It reminds me of a low-budget version of the Fandango paper-bag characters.

What’s innovative about this ad is that it’s part of a series, and links to other ads in the series are embedded right in the player. So if a viewer finds this ad entertaining, they can just click the “next video” link to watch another video in the series.

Another interesting aspect of this ad is the product it’s for. You’d never see a traditional TV commercial for a product like GMail. First, GMail absolutely free, and that makes buying expensive TV time uneconomical. Second, Gmail appeals to a fairly narrow audience when compared with mass-market consumer products like cola, diapers, and insurance.

This is the first Google commercial I can ever recall seeing. As online commercials become more prevalent, companies that traditionally haven’t made commercials will start to do so. This will happen because the Internet makes the cost of distribution dramatically lower. Online, the creative will make up a much greater share of the cost of producing a commercial compared to buying TV time.

The only problem with this ad was that when I wanted to watch more of them, I couldn’t find it again on LinkedIn! If you’re going to make something that’s entertaining, make sure to provide a way to get back to it!

Who likes talking about tampons, or back hair, or pregnancy tests?

Apparently, some people really do!

According to today’s New York Times the marketing approaches taken by makers of many formerly taboo products, such as condoms and female hygiene products, are changing. Products formerly relegated to innuendo are taking the front door – introducing racy, and often hilarious new ad strategies.

With it’s generally permissive flavor, viral online video is at the forefront of this movement – pushing both the boundaries and funny bones of all those watching.

Here’s a wildly successful internet-only spot for the Philips Norelco Bodygroom shaver directed at men under 40 who want to give a little trim to ‘all those other parts’.

And while it seems unclear whether the trend of hairless men will continue – it does seem to be working for advertisers.

Philips Norelco reported a triple in forecast sales of the Bodygroom shaver.

Assuming YouTube’s 3-second ads cause no unwanted head explosions (see my previous post), we’re going to have to find creative ways to take advantage of very very short blips of video. While these ads are still intrusive, at least they’re short.  Three seconds can only be so annoying.

How to make the most of three seconds?

• 90 Subliminal Ads Why waste the virtual eternity of three seconds on one ad? Assuming the video runs at 30 frames per second that can be 90 individual one-frame ads. Some of them are bound to make an impression.
• Hold a Sign and Scream It’s going to be hard to establish a new brand with this short time period. A great ad might be someone holding a sign with a company’s logo on it with them screaming the name of the company. How many times can you scream, “COKE!” in three seconds? Seven.
• Make a series If YouTube is smart, they’ll let us purchase a sequential series of ads. What that means is that I can make it so that a given user will see only my ads in the series that I choose. With that technology I can actually have each ad build on the other, perhaps with a narrative? While it’s a challenge, I think it’s possible to tell a story in ten three-second spots. For a perfect example of this take a look in the New Yorker. All throughout the magazine are tiny little cartoons, about the size of a postage stamp. Follow them through the magazine and you’ll see that the make up a short story.

I’ve noted before, that a viewer walks away with the same number of impressions when fast-forwarding through them on a TiVo as he does when the commercials just play. Maybe these three-second ads really will make a difference.

The story of Anheuser-Busch’s online television network, Bud.TV (NYTimes, login required)

Bud.TV may be a marketing venture at heart, but it is marketing sotto voce. The shows’ plots won’t revolve around the quest for the perfect beer and a beautiful woman to share it with. Characters won’t declaim the virtues of Budweiser’s freshness at every opportunity. The site won’t be cluttered with banner ads. Anheuser-Busch executives are banking on a more subtle connection. Attach a brand name to something cool, something entertaining, and that elusive young man (and to a lesser extent, young woman) may check out Bud.TV’s offerings again and again, send them along to friends, even take a stab at creating his own minifilm for the site.

YouTube recently announced that they will be using short, 3-second long pre-roll ads that play in front of each video. This got me thinking about some dangerous consequences.

Max Headroom, that wonderfully prescient 80s TV show, predicted this very development. In the Blipvert epsiode evil networks decide to start running compressed commercials that are only a few seconds long. This prevents users from changing the channel and embeds the content in their subconscious.

Unfortunately, these 3-second ads had one minor downside — they cause viewers’ heads to explode. Let’s hope the good folks at YouTube fare better.

Will it Blend? advertises a powerful blender with videos of their spokesman blending all sorts of objects, from iPods to golf clubs. Its popularity shows how people will willingly seek out ads that are funny and entertaining. The New York Times’ David Pogue writes:

I’m not alone when I say that I’ll happily watch your ad if it’s entertaining and worth my while. The number of hilarious ad videos circulating on YouTube—millions of people VOLUNTARILY watching corporate ads—is testimony to that.

Link: www.willitblend.com

If you a person who’s has a conversation with me since December, you’ve probably heard me mention this book. Once again, if you’re interested in figuring out where advertising is going, I couldn’t recommend it more. But for those of you who are too lazy to read the whole book… here’s Part 2 of my series on Life After the 30-Second Spot.

Jaffe brings up a shocking fact on page 15 about DVRs (aka TiVo):

David Poltrack, executive vice president of Research and Planning at CBS television, recently reassured us that DVRs are not much of a threat as once thought because internal research revealed that ad skippers recalled, on average, two commercials and one brand, which is essentially the same level of recall as with live TV.  This is just insane.

Wow. Let’s consider the implications:

• People don’t pay attention to TV commercials at all. Maybe it’s because the ads are intrusive? Are they improperly targeted? Maybe they just suck.
• An average TV ad is just as interesting when fast forwarding as when it’s playing at normal speed. Sounds like the ads aren’t very interesting.
• It’s really hard to get people’s attention. Certainly true.

The funny thing is, the people watching the DVR might be a more captive audience. Here are two scenarios:

• Viewer A doesn’t have a TiVo, and he got home just in time to catch the latest episode of Lost. After the first commercial break starts he runs to the bathroom, gets a snack, and then finally reaches the TV after the break is over.
  Total Impressions: 0
• Viewer B has set her TiVo to record Lost and start about twenty minutes late, so she can skip the commercials. In the meantime she’s already gone to the bathroom and had a snack. Once the first commercial break starts she hits the fast-forward button three times and whizzes through commercials in no time. However, her eyes are fixed on the screen. She sees a Burger King logo, a 3d-animated Mr. Clean (no logo necessary), and a Hummer. It’s important to realize that she’s been looking at the screen the whole time.
  Total Impressions: 3

Why is everyone so afraid of the TiVo?
Joseph Jaffe’s blog is located at www.jaffejuice.com

The web is not TV. It’s a different medium with different rules. We’ve put together a compendium of the top 10 rules for success with online video. These are the principles we’ll be following for our own projects and we’re certain they’ll help others as well. Read 10ton’s Top 10