• Stone: The Allure of New Online Video Ads Slick new online video pitches are alluring and sometimes shocking. But will they ever overtake simple Internet search ads?
• Ford’s Cuts Raise More Questions than Answers CEO Bill Ford announces massive job cuts and grand new plans. But he still needs to show the innovative models that he promises will revive the family firm.
• Sloan: How Ford Got Job Creation Tax Breaks How the nonsensically named American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 allowed Ford to slash jobs while reaping huge job-creation tax benefits.
Jan. 24, 2006 - Microsoft is trying to kill me. Or more specifically, an online advertisement for their new Xbox 360 sci-fi shoot-em-up, "Perfect Dark Zero", is making some menacing and very personal threats.
Earlier this week, I received an e-mail from a friend with a link to a Web site that played a dark, animated short video of an assassination—from the victim's point of view. I watched my computer screen as the gunshot victim was rushed to a hospital, placed on life-support, pronounced dead and later wheeled out on a gurney by a mortician, who plucked the bullets from the body. At which point I glimpsed the toe tag. It had my name on it.
Later, I sent the ad to a friend, and after he had clicked on it and saw his name on the toe-tag, I received an automated call on my mobile phone. "This is Joanna," went the gravelly voice of Joanna Dark, the virtual vixen who stars in the game. "The job is done. Check your e-mail."
The ad is a bit shocking, engrossing and fun—and just the kind of immersive, cross-media, slickly-produced commercial that is set to lead online advertising in its next phase of bountiful growth.
Internet advertising, of course, has exploded in the last few years, from $6 billion in 2002 to $12 billion last year—or about four percent of America's overall advertising wallet. (Television and print still get the lion's share of all ad dollars.) Text-only search ads, which appear alongside search results, have fueled the boom so far, propelling the likes of Google and Yahoo into the stock market stratosphere and tipping the anxiety scale in traditional media organizations worldwide.
But if search was the story in 2004 and 2005, video spots like the "Perfect Dark Zero" ad might be the tale of 2006. Search advertising is perfect for generating sales leads—converting shoppers into spenders. But advertisers also want to build consumer awareness of their brands with the kind of glitzy, memorable ads we see in prime time television or during the Super Bowl. For that they need video, which is increasingly technically feasible to host on the Web. More than half of U.S. households have broadband connections, and 60 percent of all Internet users consume digital media, such as the movies and music available for download on all the major Web portals, according to research firm ComScore.
High
