Television and media guru Shelly Palmer posts an excellent summary of the year in online video, and what to look for in 2007 and beyond.

The big news is that “you” are Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.” In a stunning stating of the obvious, the editors recognized that 2006 was not only the “year of online video,” but the “year of self-expression.” They, of course, were thinking about user-generated content. We don’t have to do that — that’s truly last year’s news. We have to think about the ubiquitous tools that empower consumers to share their passions with the world.

A lot of the talk in online video focuses on the technology side, but what about the creative side? Exploring the new and creative uses of online videos is one of the topics the 10ton blog will be covering in 2007.

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

Since its inception 25 years ago, MTV has been using its centralized empire of channels to tell kids what’s cool. And clearly, they’ve had great success doing just that. MTV is undisputed as a major clearinghouse for mainstream youth culture. But now MTV is scared. Why? Because the future of media distribution is not in ‘channels’ in the traditional sense.

The channel of the future is based on personal preferences and is customized to the viewer. The individual creates the channel. Pandora.com provides a model for this future. Pandora is an internet radio site that gives the listener the ability to create custom radio playlists centered around musical styles they already like.

If you’ve never used it, here’s how it works. I enter, “Miles Davis” – and I get Miles Davis Radio. This station includes Miles Davis and other artists whose profiles contain elements that Pandora has concluded make up Davis’ sound. For example, the third song on the playlist is a live cut of Scotch and Water played by Cannonball Adderly. Pandora lists the following, as qualities that it finds similar in both Miles Davis and this track by Adderly:

• hard bop influences
• bop influences
• a lively alto sax solo
• a piano solo
• a driving swing feel
• strong melodies
• a groove oriented approach

Miles Davis Radio is great, all my old faves. But what happens when I add another variable? This is where it gets interesting. So next I enter, “The Rolling Stones”. Suddenly I am presented with not just Miles Davis radio and not just Rolling Stones radio, but a calculated mélange of artists who combine qualities similar in both Davis and the Stones. This is where I’m turned on to a great song called He Went Down to The Sea, by a group called The Monks–who I’ve never heard of. Pandora decided that The Monks song was something I might like because, according to Pandora:

Based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because it features basic rock song structure, a subtle vocal harmony, repetitive melodic phrasing, mixed acoustic and electronic instrumentation and major key tonality.

Far out! At Pandora, each listener has his or her own channel and that channel is constantly changing as the listener’s tastes shift.

So why is MTV scared?

In a Pandora-style world, the winners will be those media outlets that prove to be the most personalized and the most diverse, not the most centralized. MTV can only offer so many shows in a day, and certainly only so many shows that any one person could be interested in. But with Pandora, the listener’s options are infinite, and all of those options have been custom-fitted to the user. Would you shop at Amazon or eBay if they carried only what they thought was cool? The Pandora-model works the same way – it empowers the listener. In a Pandora-world, kids no longer need an MTV to tell them what they like. Pandora offers kids a much bigger pool of potential favorites, and from those choices the kids can figure out what they like for themselves.

This decentralization presents a lot of problems for a network like MTV. But for the consumer and the advertiser alike, it’s a boon. Here’s why: advertisers finally have the information needed to target their ads at those most likely to be interested in their product. This in itself is revolutionary, but it’s nothing new: Google, Amazon, and many others are already using architectures such as this to direct their search engine ads and product suggestions. What I am really excited about are the new sub-cultures and cultural sub-groupings that these metrics are going to recognize and promote.

Take for instance, this hypothetical example. What if GameStop discovered, that as a group, punk rock listeners who are also Bach fans tend overwhelmingly to be avid Nintendo Wii players? It’s an advertiser’s dream. It’s a chance to carve out new brand loyalty in highly-specific groups that essentially didn’t exist or recognize themselves as groups before.

This is beyond the grasp of MTV one-size fits all youth marketing. But for those blazing the trail of advertising with metric-based placement it will be a chance to get the first scoop on new audiences as they are created. MTV, watch out!

Here’s a question: How much community does the average car, sneaker, or beverage ad create? None.

And it doesn’t make sense. Why not create an ad with the potential to promote itself?

You can’t bore people into buying your product by making intrusive, repetitive ads. Ads like this tell the audience nothing more than, “Yes, we have a product and, yes, you can buy it.” Because these ads lack intrinsic entertainment value, you end up having to pay for every viewer experience.

But there’s another way. Why not give your audience something that they intrinsically enjoy? That way the viewers can pass it on themselves, creating their own community around your ad. With every new friend added to the chain, so grows your product’s notoriety, and the number of people who have not only an awareness, but have actively participated in promoting your ad. New connections, blog posts, forwards, love letters, affairs beginning and ending — all around your product!

Just like TV creates community. Just like movies create community. Your ad brings people together. Remember those halcyon days snuggled around the RCA floor set waiting for Jack Benny to come on? Well neither do I. But I do remember making dates to watch X-Files. (Come on, I’m not the only one!) And you know what? It wasn’t any less entertaining because 20th Century Fox got something out of the exchange. And I still remember all this stuff years later.

It’s a powerful idea. And the great part is, people will be drawn to your ad because they’re getting just as much out of it as you are.

I’m currently in the middle of reading Life After the 30-Second Spot by Joseph Jaffe, and so far I’d highly recommend it for anyone who’s trying to figure out how to advertise on the web. While he doesn’t solely focus on Internet advertising, a lot of his concepts are applicable. True, he’s writing from way back in 2005, and doesn’t even mention YouTube, the stuff he’s saying seems to be totally true. He’s bold about his assertions, but they’re correct.

We posted a blog entry about Super Bowl ads a few days ago, and sure enough, early on in the book, Jaffe discusses the Super-Bowl as well. As someone who could care less about football, the Super-Bowl is still a big deal for me, it’s the only TV ritual where I go to the bathroom and talk during the content and carefully watch during the ads. Considering that a lot of the other people who are watching it also don’t really like the sport, I know I’m not the only one.

On page 9 Jaffe says:

And from a creative standpoint, is this pinnacle of the calendar year truly the ultimate expression of the promise and potential of advertising? Or is it the biggest overdose of Kool-Aid ingestion? Why is it that we see this kind of creativity only once a year? Shouldn’t this be happening all year?

He’s right. It basically comes down to creative risk taking. Companies are often afraid to make to the kind of risks that earn them the respect of consumers. Some of the advertising that I like the best is the kind that makes a joke that everyone might not get. If you understand it, you’re suddenly in the club, and maybe you even respect them for trying.

Super-Bowl ads were the first ads that I went online to watch without even knowing what I was going to see. Jaffe is correct, this should be happening all year long, and if companies are afraid to do it on TV, let’s do it online, where we can get away with so much more.

Joseph Jaffe’s blog is located at www.jaffejuice.com

A term that’s been going around a lot is permissive advertising, which eventually is going to be the only worthwhile kind of advertising online, and everywhere else.

Intrusive ads have been around for a while, and they work, but who really likes them? An editor I know leaves CNN all day long. A few months ago, every time I was in his suite, I would see the HeadOn commercial. “HeadOn, Apply Directly to Forehead. HeadOn, Apply Directly to Forehead. HeadOn, Apply Directly to Forehead.” The commercial was so fantastically annoying that we would make fun of it constantly. He eventually went out and bought me some HeadOn, which I proudly displayed on top of my monitor for a week, until it fell behind the desk.

Yes, that kind of advertising works, just as I’m sure someone sold a lot of X10 web cams from those evil pop-behind ads that were once all over the Internet, but really, it’s a one trick pony. Is any company going to be able to build a real brand by doing this? Permissive advertising is really the way that everyone is going to have to go.

Three-hundred sixty four days a year, TV ads are, at best, forgettable background noise. People don’t pay much attention or give them a second thought.  But as we all know, there’s one day on which the ads are the star. On Super Bowl Sunday, people eagerly anticipate each year’s crop of creative ads, and gather around with their friends to watch them, and talk about them afterwards. The ads are as much an event as the game.

What makes an ad an event? It has to be inherently entertaining, so that people want to watch on its own merit, even if they have no initial feelings about the product. It has to be so good that people will seek it out, set aside time to watch it, and share it with their friends. And they’ll come away with a positive impression of the product.

TV ads work by relentlessly repeating a message until it’s drilled into the viewer’s mind. But there’s no way this will work online. On the Web, anything forgettable or intrusive is just going to annoy people, waste their time, and leave a bad impression—if the user doesn’t click away first.

Like Super Bowl ads, the best online ads are actively sought out on their own merit, as a shared experience with friends. Thanks to the email, IM, social networks and other online tools, the Internet creates a cultural space for social interaction around advertising. People will link to the best ads on YouTube, embed them in their blogs, and send them to their friends. They’ll talk about cool new ads with the same enthusiasm they’d talk about about a hit song or a new book.

The best online ads are events. Because on the Internet, it’s Super Bowl Sunday 365 days a year.

Welcome to the 10ton blog! We’ve dedicated ourselves to making effective, entertaining video for the web, and in this blog we’re going to talk about the best way to accomplish this, highlight the best uses of video online, and talk about the people, companies and businesses that are doing a great job harnessing the power of online video.

This is a brand new medium, and we’ll be joining you along the way in discovering its possibilities.

One thing that’s obvious is that the older ways of advertising are going to have limited effectiveness online. When browsing, the user has near total control, and intrusive ads, like the traditional 30-second television commercial, just aren’t going to work. If we can’t engage the consumer, and make it an enjoyable experience for them, why bother? The ads that we make are also going to be the ones that we’d actually want to watch.

On the 10ton blog, we’re going to talk about how advertising on the Internet is different and show, with our own ideas and videos, how to make it work. It’ll certainly be interesting!