Totally agree with Fred here...    Postrolls are are really an untapped opportunity.  After you watch a funny baseball clip, a link to buy tickets or sports jerseys makes total sense.  Even better would be if you let users pick the link.

Feedburner lets me approve or bag the ads that appear in my feed and on my site, and I've turned down a few penny stock links here and there... and I think that improves the overall quality of the experience and content on the site.  YouTube should work the same way, letting me turn down advertisers I don't believe in.   

From Searchviews...

"Marketers have been getting excited about the recent distribution deals cut between search engines and social networks....Now consider social networking sites. Users visit pages in those networks not because of the concepts being discussed, but because of the people they know. You may like the same bands, movies, books or sports teams as your friends, but that’s not why you’re ending up at their pages. You’re there to catch up on what’s new with your crew. This is going to completely change the way marketers need to message to these groups."

Can I repeat that?

"This is going to completely change the way marketers need to message to these groups."

Unless you get you users intimately involving themselves in your brand, like this young woman who has a Coach wallpaper as her background in MySpace, its all just going to sound like push advertising for products we don't want, like or care about...   non-user selected or MeVertised advertising is going to be the pop-ups of Web 2.0...  people will do everything to block, get rid of, and avoid this kind of messaging.

What kind of CPMs do you think she's getting on her page for that?  How badly do you think Coach wants to be able to push that kind of thing out?

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I disagree with Fred's assertion that YouTube could be making a ton of money on pre-rolls.

Pre-rolls, in their current form, suck.

No, really suck.

The other day I was watching some great wiffleball footage.  Anyone who ever grew up playing would be really jealous of these guys who seemed to record every single pitch on video over eight seasons.  Man, I pitched this one game where I gave up one hit and whiffed 25...  of course I walked 11, but still...   Anyway, repurposed TV car commercials and mortgage ads would have completely ruined the experience for me.... and that's all YouTube really is... its an entertainment experience.

We put up with TV commercials because, they're more than just entertainment.  There's social capital being built.  We're watching the same shows as our friends...   the price for knowing what happens on Nip Tuck is that you have to watch some commercials... but socially, being in the Nip Tuck "know" is very valuable.  Plus, we're planted in front of the TV... not much on...   the value of switching is pretty low.

But when I watch these wiffleball clips, I may send them to a couple of friends, but its mostly a solitary experience... just pure entertainment value.  I don't need to watch them, and there are a million other distracting entertaining things on the web to choose from.  If I had to watch a 10 second preroll in front of each one, I'd quickly lose interest, because the entertainment value would suffer. 

So how else can YouTube monetize these videos?   Rather than a full pre-roll... how about just a "Sponsored by, around the player.... re-skin the player."  Maybe not the same CPM, but that wouldn't really ruin my viewing experience.

More interesting would be the idea of a user selected theme of some sort...  How about breaking down the elements of a brand and allowing the user to mix them in.  So, with the wiffleball videos, the user could be given a little editor that allows him to stick a logo and some text right on the corner of the screen...  they select from a menu of choices... they might pick Nike or Adidas or Gatorade or something.   Or, let ESPN sponsor the sports videos, pull them onto their site, throw in the SportsCenter theme song, etc.  In that scenario, the owner of the video knows something about the content and the audience that allows them to select an ad that fits, in a way that's not obtrusive.  Plus, knowing that the owner selected it also makes it part of the content, versus something YouTube tacked on at the beginning. 

Plus, the breadth and quality of video advertising has to get a lot better...   maybe companies should be putting live offers out on YouTube for people to create advertising for them and make the videos themselves the advertising.   

Pre-rolls are non-contextual.  They degrade the user experience.  They degrade the quality of the content.   They are not expressive the way the content itself is. 

I know its hard to be creative with your advertising and scale at the same time, but I don't think you'll ever see anyone put up with 10 second prerolls on half the videos they see on YouTube.

I dated a brand once.

We had a great time... lots of fun...  got really close right away, but then, suddenly, I got this note:

"Dear Charlie,

     You've been great to me and I really enjoyed the time we spent together... the money you spent on me... all the friends you've introduced me to, but now this marketing campaign is over and I feel like I need a change.  I'm afraid of just being the same brand all my life.  I'm not ready for this kind of commitment...  I hope you understand.

Love,

Brand-y"


I should have realized it would happen.  Marketing slogans change.  Products get redesigned, usually, for the worse--alienating loyal users.  Its so hard to maintain a consistent relationship with a brand, because they're always changing... looking upstream, downstream, diversifying, etc. 

Its even worse in a world of sell side advertising where you pick the ads you want to run, because they're brands you like.  Then, they just get yanked from you when a campaign runs out.  That's because marketing is campaign driven.  It has an end.  It is seasonal... driven by television lineups, upfronts, etc.  Brands aren't consistent, and so users have little loyalty to the message.  Its only a matter of time before I stop obeying my thirst to drink Sprite or quenching my thirst to drink Gatorade (Is Gatorade even the "thirst quencher" anymore?  I don't remember.) and I'm doing some other action besides just drinking it.

So at some point, Careerbuilder is going to stop paying us to maintain Careerbuilder Monk-e-mails, even though consumers still want to send them.  I mean, are they supposed to run this forever?  Well, maybe...   Its an interesting problem...  certainly it will be a messy breakup...  just one day the "send to a friend" button disappears and your consumer says, "You won't make monkey for me anymore...   we haven't monkeyed around in weeks...  are you seeing another consumer??" 

Persistence in branding is going to be an issue in a sell-side MeVertised world where the consumers think they own the brand and they have to be told they were just "borrowing" it.... unless we see longer term commitments on the parts of brands.  Like, what happens if American Apparel loses interest in Second Life?  Will they close the store?

AdAge left out a key criteria in their overview of mainstream vs. cutting edge advertising...

"While marketing prognosticators and technophiles rush into the future, raving about the next big content delivery system or ad model, the fact is most Americans -- notably adults with steady incomes -- still get their content the old-fashioned way."

I agree, but how many of the key influencers are still doing this, but the bleeding edgers, trendwatchers, trendsetters, etc. habits are changing...  you can't argue that.  You don't have to reach everyone on the first try.. .you have to reach the right people... the people that other people want to be like.  These are the people that are always trying stuff first and get social capital for that.  There was a time horse and buggy sales were still strong, too, you know.  If you're not adopting to new technologies, you're going to find yourself far behind very soon.

I mean, seriously, who would you rather market to, my 88 year old Nana, or her 27 year old RSS enabled grandson who she knows is cool and wants to be associated with.  :)

Our Jeep Compass Karaoke Site won Adobe's Site of the Day today.    I can't really sing, but if anyone sends me their performances, I'll be happy to post them!  Charlie@oddcast.com

So Mike Oliver posted on my post on MeVertising, and made a good comment on it, so now I'm reposting something from his repost... 

"A brand is now only as influential as its consumers."

Brilliant.

When I first met with Oddcast, and even before that, I was starting to get the sense that the idea that "markets were conversations" was being taken further.  Lines were being blurred.  Blogging and other user generated media brought the brands down from the ivory towers to the people, even if they came kicking and screaming.  They were ours.

When the brands woke up from being dazed, it seemed that they began to like us... to want to get closer to us.  They wanted to be in our networks, to be friends with us.

At first, I started calling this phenomenon "Brand Association."  The things I buy wanted to be closer to me. 

Then I realized that, even more than that, they wanted to be me, and me to be them...   and to a large extent, I am them.  I don't drink, so when I'm out at bars, I'm Sprite guy.  Its become a running joke, but ask any of my friends who they think of when they see a Sprite, its probably me.  I am a Mustang and Jamba Juice, and Macy's, too.   When I bring these brands with me online through Flickr pics of the car or moblogging from Jamba Juice, what it really is is "Brand Expression."  I am self identifying with a number of brands.  I have a relationship with brands that I am committing a part of myself to.

Henry Jenkins covers this phenomenon in his new book and new blog:

"I wanted to suggest the various ways that people are trying to attach value to emotion in the new media economy...the ways that product placements sought to connect the emotions associate with entertainment onto products embedded within that story.

Some aspects of what I am calling affective economics are deeply embedded in current advertising practice, referred to by the various terms Bogost identifies ("lifestyle marketing," "associative advertising," "relationship marketing," etc.) ...

I am convinced that this shift represents the best means we have of getting media producers to reassess their relationship to their consumers and that seems to be key to the long term viability of participatory culture...companies...will have an economic interest in opening themselves up to greater participation from their consumers...."

Some aspects of this, as Henry points out, are not totally new.  We've always had lifestyle marketing... but something about this new trend... this new closeness, where brands are opening up and becoming vulnerable to form a stronger tie to consumers... it all seems a bit different.

When I was at USV, digital media and marketing stuff generally went into my VC & Technology category, but I think I'm in a new playing field now...  and so I'm going to start categorizing it accordingly.

But none of the terms out there are quite as direct as I'd like... so I've come up with something that says exactly what I feel this is...  MeVertising.  Its a blurring between my own identity, brand association, ad consumption, expression, etc.   

Its buying the Nike t-shirt.  In that scenario, who is advertising what?

• Is Nike advertising on me, literally?
• Am I advertising that I subscribe to the Nike lifestyle, whatever that is?
• Am I advertising that I am a sophisticated t-shirt buyer?

And I don't even want to go into what that does to the economics of the whole thing...

So, over the course of the future of this blog, I will be doing a lot of MeVertising posting, tagging things MeVertising in del.icio.us and Technorati.  Feel free to do the same and join me in the exploration.