The advertising "experience"

This will be quick, but I wanted to throw my two cents into the ring and get back to some "positive" blogging instead of the technology debates. There's an interesting article over at the Wall Street Journal that talks about "pre-rolls" in video advertising. What are pre-rolls? Those annoying 10 to 20 second blurbs about nothing that you have to sit through before the video you want plays. Just a terrible method of advertising. As a consumer, I want something, so wouldn't it be great if you, as an advertiser, blocked me from seeing it? It's the online video equivalent of putting toothpicks in people's eyeballs.

Scoble, who has gone from the soft, comfy enclaves of a career at Microsoft to the wild west of online video has some good thoughts. (did I really just use soft and comfy in the same sentence as Microsoft? Yes, yes I did.)

I can’t wait for the ROI reports that show that Web 2.0 advertising doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t.

Consumers are smart, and they don't like a lot of BS, so advertisers have to be equally smart. This is one area where I think adopting Rich Internet Applications gives advertisers a big advantage - it allows them to get smarter and do more, and this isn't technology specific.

Advertisers need to get more sophisticated, and RIAs give a much higher level of sophistication than other mediums because they bring together the worlds of audio, video and content. Consumers can interact with your video, they can dive into a very rich experience and play. A lot of advertisers are already doing this. Check out the Zelda site. It's kiddy, but it's a very branded experience and incorporates a lot of relevant audio and video which adds to the site - it creates an experience around Zelda. I think this kind of thing is just the beginning. Why couldn't companies sponsor a video and surround the video with an interactive canvas? The user gets to watch the video uninterrupted, but then may be interested enough to stick around and explore the site. If you make the site "fun" they're more likely to do that. You could even fade the video out as it ends and replace it with something that hooks the user to stick around more.

As web application developers, adopting an RIA strategy gives you a lot more flexibility in the kinds of things you can offer advertisers. Advertisers are (usually) good at being creative. If you can give them the most creative medium possible, they can use their imagination and everyone is better off - users, advertisers, and content providers. The web has always been fun, and we finally have technologies that can make it come alive. There are going to be some cool advertising models as a result of that.