Saturday, June 14, 2008

Arrival of the new ad?

Source: Mashable

YouTube’s “Sell Your Own Ads” Strategy: Desperation or the Future of Advertising?

June 9, 2008 — 08:48 AM PDT — by Adam Ostrow —

Google has added an interesting twist to their monetization strategy for YouTube: allow content producers to sell their own advertising....


Nice to know Google is still working on the problem of making money from YouTube, as I think the issue really has to do with the need for the arrival of choice and I came up with my own suggestion for a new type of ad, back in May.

Thinking more on it as I flesh out the idea it just seems so natural as a way to do advertising with video where you have a tab on the video, say in the upper left corner, like the tab on a browser that says something like "Advertiser supported" and to see the ad, the viewer has to, yup, click on the tab!

So if you don't want to see the ad, you just ignore the tab, watch the video and go on your merry way.

The viewer makes the choice.

Seem dumb?

Well, television advertising models I think still dominate the web where you push things on people which is the way television works as it's so passively experienced. In contrast the web is interactive and choice rules, so pushed ads work to some extent, but to me they're annoying, and I know I can just ignore pushed ads, and still get the content!

In contrast, newspapers traditionally are more like this idea as you get a lot of content until you turn the page and see an ad, or go all the way to the back to get classifieds, because, people have more choice with the paper in their hands.

So I'm not really asking for something completely new, but something closer to the newspaper ad model with a web twist as you can get a full video commercial--which had better be good!!!

Pairing a really good commercial with videos that get downloaded a lot is also just a good idea as that can help it go viral in a way that involves viewer choice.

As my belief is that people do not hate ads: they hate bad ads and ads being pushed on them which is what television and radio do.

So because of television and radio there is this notion that people hate advertising.

But I think they just dislike pushy sales tactics that are traditional in certain media, but unnecessary on the web, where choice rules.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Superbug kills young and healthy

Source: MSNBC, post title is their headline

Superbug kills young and healthy, experts say
Drug-resistant MRSA responsible for 24 deaths during 2006-2007 flu season

...Many of the cases were caused by a drug-resistant form called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA, the team led by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday....