YouTube Gives Us A Look Into Commercials For The Web
Online advertising is nearly as old as the Web itself. And from the beginning advertisers have been salivating over the day that video could be easily viewed. What they didn’t fully understand is that unlike television (at least until Tivo), a commercial cannot pushed down the throat of a consumer. Why would someone chose to watch a commercial?
Well video is no here and that problem is something that mainstream advertisers haven’t yet tackled. You have the usual creation of buzzwords that come up, and the attempt to create compelling content. The problem with most Madison Ave. types is that they are forced to make everything thing so damn confusing.
It just may be that YouTube has provided the answer. YouTube is a community driven site of videos that is quickly gaining popularity. Founded in February of 2005, YouTube has quickly made news by attracting the wrath of narrow minded companies like NBC for pushing out samples of their content. It seems that most major companies view YouTube as a nuisance, but their traffic numbers tell another story. In short, YouTube is the new MySpace.
Most of the content being uploaded to YouTube is video blogs. People are able to quickly make a video using their camcorder or computer cam, and upload the video to YouTube. YouTube does a great job in transcoding this content into Flash video, making it quick to load. And YouTube provides the option of tagging the videos for easy searching by their members.
So, what does this mean for commercials? Let’s check out this clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXe8pyY9G80
In this clip a teenage girl who goes by the name Bowiechick talks about her recent break up. Pretty normal stuff for a teenage video blog, but you’ll notice she is playing with the special effects on her Logitech cam. This video is currently up to over 165,000 views. Bowiechick has unintentionally done a commercial for Logitech. She conveys the level of sincerity and interest that advertisers have been trying to capture for decades. But here is why, she is a real consumer, using a device she enjoys. Can this be a commercial for the future?
Let me ask this way. What if Apple decided to pick up the “switch” campaign again. But this time instead of using people in front of a white screen talking about the benefits of Apple, they had real people talking, and showing the benefits of their Mac.
Then let’s look at the demographic targeting of something like YouTube. When you have someone like Bowiechick showing off her Web cam on a site that is filled with people uploading video, 165,000 people is akin to Logictech buying a commercial on CSI when it comes to target audience reach.
Then of course you have the idea of pandering to an audience with provocative content, just to get your name out there. If you browse through YouTube, you will find no lack of this type of video. Most of these videos consist of two attractive young women, making out and groping each other with a domain name at the bottom of the screen. How this seems like a horribly offensive tactic, this will surely get eyeballs. And isn’t this where TV commercials are heading anyway? I’m not saying it’s a good idea, or even clever. It just is what it is.
USWeb is of course an early adapter to these types of market creations. We were putting movie trailers on people’s personal MySpace pages long before they were gobbled up by Fox. And this is no different. I had a talk with Bowiechick, and a few other people from YouTube last night. We are rolling out a test program with a few of these creative people to see how we might integrate our clients into their content. Let me know your thoughts on where this is going.
Technorati Tags: youtube, marketing, bowiechick