This still photo (click on to enlarge) taken at Rainbow Springs in Florida does not show what an underwater video camera would have shown. The fish giving me the "evil eye" was patrolling his territory very aggressively. My point is that video is more entertaining than photos for most people.
While this blog's title sounds like I'm against all digital video advertising, I'm not! While these videos can be put on websites that are search engine optimized (SEO'd) for better ranking, or in the PPC ads on the SERP's, they can serve an entertaining and educational purpose, as long as they don't intentionally mislead consumers in any way. In fact, with VOD digital advertising, consumers can have the power to be more precise in picking the most relevant ( based on timely intent) digital video ads, and maybe even have the reciprocity of rating and reviewing that video ad. These are principles of "Concurrence Marketing".
Google has recently empowered the consumer with the three (top of the page) choices of sponsored videos at Google Video. I chose Ask the Builder - tape measure/sonic measure . You have a choice of seeing the LowerMyBills.com video ad to begin with or it plays automatically at the end of the "Ask the Builder" video. Of course, you can cancel the video ad at any time.
However, the LowerMyBills.com video advertising is misleading, in my opinion, since it says: "Mortgage rates are at 40 year lows!". I may be wrong, but on 8/4/03 I refinanced my home at a 30 year fixed, 4.625 % interest rate, with a 1/2 % loan origination fee! That date is within the last 40 years, and I don't think I can do better now! So, the claim they make is very misleading! In all fairness, though, rates are still low compared to other times within the last 40 years.
The danger also lies in the fact that if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a million words. Manipulation of video images by marketers to build a brand through misleading and even deceptive creative techniques and content would come under the FTC's "Advertising and Marketing on the Internet: Rules of the Road". In my opinion, these rules would also apply to "Web TV", "Digital TV" or "I.P. TV". I elaborated on "The FTC on Deception, Disclosure, and Endorsements" in my 5/10/06 post.
Next, is why I got on this subject to begin with.
I subscribe to Search Engine Watch where "The Search & Branding Tug-Of-War, Again" was posted on 6/21/06. Danny Sullivan put a link in that article to a blog post entitled "Search Advertising Does NOT Build Brands". The comments are informative, and I believe Danny proves his points, but the author eventually admitted that his blog post title was basically what I call "title bait", and said: "..headlines like this are a great way to get people like you (Danny) to show up, engage in a debate, and flesh out the issue." One comment in opposition to Danny I found interesting, and posted my own comment on "User-gen brand-building: how marketers avoid being in the horse carriage business". Social search is big and definitely part of Search Marketing, as it can help people find more of those kind of social search or social e-commerce sites.
Danny's article got me thinking about more proof that Search Marketing can help build a brand along with other marketing tools. So, since informative digital video advertising can also be easier than reading ad copy, I figured that search marketing would help people find informative digital video advertising on the types of products they want. Also, let's not forget that many believe that if a brand can not be found easily in a search for the brand keywords, that brand looses a certain amount of credibility!
This is noted in this 6/24/06 news article entitled "Atlas Study Finds Best Advertising Creative Four Times More Effective than the Least Creative in Digital Video Medium". It said: "The technology and expertise of Atlas On Demand enable leading agencies and advertisers to plan, manage, track and optimize their digital video campaigns,.." It also talked about "brand exposure duration" which builds brands, and said: "They also found that the longest video advertising actually showed the greatest viewing duration, indicating that many viewers watched this video multiple times through rewinding." "Rewinding", of course, is done digitally vs. mechanically.
That last finding proves to me that people are basically lazy and would rather be entertained and accurately informed by a video vs. lengthy text. This kind of brand building power means to me that marketers have, in my opinion, a moral obligation to not lead consumers down their controlled video path strictly out of greed motives. Even the Cluetrain Manifesto said in 1999: "most companies ignore their ability to deliver genuine knowledge, opting instead to crank out sterile happytalk that insults the intelligence of markets literally too smart to buy it." That "happytalk" has turned into digital video imaging, and it is sometimes intentionally misleading in order to build their brand, or sell their goods & services.
Video On Demand will flourish on the Internet and on TV. This 5/24/06 ClickZ article entitled "Video Consumption Up Heavily: comScore", and this 5/06 issue of WIRED magazine entitled "A Guide to the Online Video Explosion " are evidence of this fact. The user generated video content sites online are getting more creative, as with GoogleIdol.com. They are encouraging the creation of digital video advertising through user generated promotional videos. Somehow, I prefer user generated video content to the "corporate speak" kind, even though both can be misleading.
What do you think?
Bill
Very interesting take on video, search, and the ethics of branding.
My main point in my post was that if users can take greater control over how brands are presented and consumed by actual users, then we are likely to have a more honest, if more unpredictable, brandscape.
User-gen or user-enabled brands will certainly make marketers lives more difficult and those brands are certainly more prone to being gamed, but, by and large, I think the net effect will be beneficial and a brand will possibly have greater longevity if it can understand its customers and the feedback they provide in the form of how they co-evolve the brand in question
Posted by: gordon gould | June 26, 2006 at 10:13 PM