I Hate You, Blue-Tux-Wearing Viagra Guy!Web video ads are annoying and repetitive. Here's how to fix them.
Posted Friday, Nov. 21, 2008, at 5:20 PM ET
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StumbleUponFor instance, consider Research in Motion. The manufacturer of the BlackBerry is a huge online advertiser, but the company has produced only a handful of Web ads. In each one, various unobjectionable pictures and logos depicting suburban life—kids playing ball, dogs running, happy people on vacation—all meld together to form a BlackBerry phone. What the announcer says next should not really offend anyone; rendered in print, the words look innocent: "Connect to everything you love in life with BlackBerry." But trust me. Hear that phrase three or four dozen times and it begins to take on an air of menace. You become attuned to the precise, demonic intonation in the voice-over. Am I paranoid to think that the announcer is laughing at me—is she having a good time taunting me with the same nearly meaningless phrase over and over and over again? I think I've seen this ad roughly 17,000 times; it ran relentlessly in an episode of The Office I recently watched on Hulu. It does not endear BlackBerry to me.
Some of this repetition is by design. Anthony Soohoo, CBS Interactive's senior vice president for entertainment, told me that advertisers choose to air the same ad many times during Web shows in an effort to boost effectiveness. This logic sounds like a holdover from the past: On TV, where any given spot is squeezed in among other ads for different companies, repeating a message may help break through the noise. But on the Web you rarely see two different ads side by side—there's often just one commercial per break. When an ad stands alone, everything about it becomes more noticeable. And if the ad sucks, having it stand out isn't a good thing. I'm sure I've seen commercials for Totino's Pizza Rolls on TV and never scrutinized them closely. But it took just two Web viewings for me to recognize that "The pizza way to snack!" is perhaps the laziest ad copy ever written.
The shame about all this is that the Web should allow for much more creativity than TV. The Internet lets advertisers track a viewer like me over time, noting which programs and ads I watch and which I ignore—technology that, in theory, should let companies show me ads tailored to my general tastes. Advertisers can also break with TV conventions. Instead of running three minute-long Viagra ads during 60 Minutes, Pfizer could have aired six 30-second spots in sequence, perhaps telling a story—of desire, loss, sadness, epiphany, and finally rejuvenation—over the course of the commercial breaks. If done well, this conceit would keep people watching; for Viagra, especially, advertising on the Web might be liberating, allowing for messages that are more suggestive and risqué than Pfizer could ever get away with on TV. And such creativity doesn't come at a steep price. Audiences on the Web are used to low-fi video, found footage, and allusions to other stuff online. Corporations might take a page from the Obama campaign, which ran many cheaply produced Web ads that featured viral videos, old movies, man-on-the-street interviews shot by hand-held cameras, and sincere testimonials from real people. This last method could be especially fruitful; the best Web videos (think Numa Numa, the Star Wars kid, the laughing baby, or Evolution of Dance) are those that seem authentically surprising. Imagine a Viagra ad featuring real men talking about how Viagra has changed their lives—wouldn't that get your attention over blue-tux guy?
In addition to Obama's videos, I'd recommend that anyone looking to produce ads for the Web consult the Onion's video site. The satirical newspaper does two things well with the ads it runs alongside its hilarious videos. First, it puts the ad in the right place—they run after, rather than before, the Onion's own content. Because the ad isn't standing in the way of your video, it doesn't annoy you as much—which is not only good for you, but good for the advertiser, too. The Onion can afford to do this because the ads it runs are pretty good—many reflect the Onion's sense of humor, and are almost as entertaining as the videos themselves. This approach reflects how the Web works: It's not important how many people see your ad, but how many people like your ad. If people respond positively to what you're shilling, they'll talk about the ad and pass it around; if people hate it, they'll click away—or, worse, decide never to buy your wares. On the Web, there's always something better to do than watch an ad.
Fortunately, a few others in the online video business are starting to figure this out. J.P. Colaco, Hulu's senior vice president of advertising, told me that his company's main goal is usability—the future of TV on the Web, he says, is fewer ads per show, with each advertiser paying high rates in order to target a compatible audience. Hulu is working with advertisers to reduce repetition; the company even has an in-house creative department to help advertisers come up with more Web-savvy ads, including ads that tell a story over a series of commercial breaks. Hulu is also developing algorithms to run ads that are tailored to your taste. As of now, each ad on Hulu features thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons. The buttons don't do much now, but, in time, they will. If I click thumbs-down on every car ad, Hulu will realize I'm not interested in cars—and I'm not interested in that damned blue-tux guy, either.
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