What new video magazine ads mean for the future of marketing
By Jason Buckland, Sympatico / MSN Finance
My roommate claims to be two things: 1) a red-blooded, full-grown man, and 2) a preeminent authority on Harry Potter.
Now, Harry Potter’ s great. My sisters love it. Kids love it. It’s a big time entertainment machine.
But show me another rational, adult male who lives and breathes Harry Potter, and I’ll show you two dozen women that worship Friday Night Smackdown and would encourage their husbands to schedule a fantasy football draft on the week of their weddings.
Why do I bring this up? Because apparently in Harry Potter (he called me a “muggle” for asking him this), there’s this virtual newspaper called the Daily Prophet, complete with moving images and video rolling on every page.
And CBS and Pepsi, it now seems, are down with the HP. The Financial Times reports next month’s Entertainment Weekly will feature a few groundbreaking, Potter-esque ads from the two corporations, ones that’ll appear on wafer-thin video screens built into the page.
According to the Times, the full-motion video ads are a pricey experiment, but two that could foreshadow the future of marketing.
The ads, which will only appear in Entertainment Weekly’s delivered in New York and L.A., reportedly cost CBS and Pepsi millions - - several dollars each, where a normal EW full-page ad would go for about 9 cents a copy.
Still, the technology is pretty cool (the video ad will start to play when the page is opened, like a music greeting card), and you could argue the buzz the concept’s getting now is enough return on the investment, as-is.
But given the outrageous price, the video ads seem to underscore the problems in a still-ravaged marketing industry that – aside from those Dos Equis commercials – couldn’t generate any buzz if it travelled back to the 60’s and hijacked Don Draper.
If you remember, a few months ago in this space we discussed the arrival of Wonka-style edible ads as a way to give newspaper marketing a shot in the arm.
Yet those, too, were pretty costly ventures. And what we’re seeing now is a fairly expansive dichotomy appearing in the ad world that’s threatening to oust the little guy.
Since only companies with major ad budgets can afford these new overhyped, buzz-built placings, it’s forcing mid-level businesses to go viral to fill the void left by traditional advertising.
And unless you get a knockout hit like the drum-playing gorilla (it was from Cadbury, but still), this unfortunately becomes a case of go-big-or-go-home for modestly-sized companies trying to make a name for their product.
Posted by: armlecker | Aug 21, 2021 4:17:59 AM
What is wrong in our world ? Now videos in magazines? Why not in 3 D ? Or is that the next step ? magazines in these days are 3/4 full of advertisement and 3-4 stories of rehash of allready written hash .This applies to most of different types of them .Another type of scam to intice their fellowship to buy them ? Maybee not . Most of these magazines are bought and displayed for waitingrooms where people spent hours to see somebody for whatever .Come on AD.peoples .Give us something better usefull in this respect .But who cares .Only of what counts is SELL SELL SELL ! Now you know of what is wrong in this world .AMEN.