Live…from your banner ad
There was an interesting article on Doubleclick/New Line shooting video and streaming “live” into banner ads.
A novel concept, but after I got over the cool factor my question was — will it really come across cool enough (if they even notice) to the web user and ultimately put butts in the seat on 2/23? My take - probably not. Did it get New Line (and Doubleclick) some forward-thinking PR - yes. Of course it is much easier to measure how well the press release gets picked up versus actually driving ticket sales.
I find it interesting also, how the writer confuses in-stream with in-page/display including Michael Barrett’s quote about in-stream inventory near the end. I wonder how many other quotes/facts are taken out of context…? Also, interaction rate = time spent watching an ad? The fact checker at NYTimes must have been too busy looking for the screenshots of the ads.
Live video is not a new concept and not to one up any of our friends at Doubleclick/Motif - EyeWonder had live video executions when we were still using our own Java codec before Flash video was even readily available. More recently, we get questions about utilizing live streaming into ads, but nothing has come to fruition mainly because the execution may be richer media, but it more than likely won’t equate to richer results. Can EyeWonder pull something like this off? Absolutely. There are lots of great features available through the Flash Media Server and we are constantly looking for new ways to utilize these features that truly return on your investment by focusing on your campaign’s objective.
-RKM
FYI, the Levis ad mentioned in the article is part of a campaign we worked on in late 2006 out of Avenue A - Seattle. Check it out here - wait for the initial video to play, then mouseover for the full video to play with the hotspots on the last frame. Always great to see video shot specifically for web and utilized in such a clean and engaging manner!