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Commercials Come To The Net (After This Word)
ctwxman writes "Say it isn't so. Full-motion commercials, when you go to click off a page, are coming to a website near you! The New York Times (standing in a bathtub with an electric iron required) reports: "Beginning tomorrow, more than a dozen Web sites, including MSN, ESPN, Lycos and iVillage, will run full-motion video commercials from Pepsi, AT&T, Honda, Vonage and Warner Brothers, in a six-week test that some analysts and online executives say could herald the start of a new era of Internet advertising." Unicast, the company responsible, says the ads will play regardless of pop-up blocking. "The only format that loads completely before it is allowed to play, the Full Screen Superstitial is guaranteed to play perfectly for every consumer, every time."
I work in TV where commercials pay the freight. Is this so wrong on the net? It's not what we're used to, but maybe we're asking for more than is reasonable. I just don't know." I think I hear the whip swinging back, but harder ...
I don't have flash, or even animated gif support in my browser. no javascript either. rarely is it a problem (read: homestar) and it is a boon the rest of the time :D
of web sites I no longer need to visit and products I no longer need to buy. I love the way they help me cut down on the crap in my life!
Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.
TANSTAAFL.
Who's forcing them to go to these sites ? Last time I checked, you had access to this smart little "X" button that would close the window.
I'm all for those ads. They dont try and trick you by using faked windows, they just plain make their sales speech, and then you move on. If you dont like it, there are a bunch of other sites around that dont use them.
Marriage is considered capital punishment for the theft of a goat in some third world countries...
By BOB TEDESCHI
Published: January 19, 2004
TELEVISION commercials, in all their big, loud glory, are coming to the Web.
Beginning tomorrow, more than a dozen Web sites, including MSN, ESPN, Lycos and iVillage, will run full-motion video commercials from Pepsi, AT&T, Honda, Vonage and Warner Brothers, in a six-week test that some analysts and online executives say could herald the start of a new era of Internet advertising.
"It's TV, without the television," said John Vail, director for digital media and marketing for Pepsi-Cola North America, a unit of PepsiCo.
Video advertisements from major marketers have dotted the online landscape sporadically in recent years, but the new ads differ from their precursors in one critical respect: until now, none have run at 30 frames a second, the speed of TV video. As a result, most multimedia ads are less sharp than TV images, even for people with fast connections.
The new ad technology, from Unicast, an advertising company based in New York, invisibly loads the commercial while unwitting users read a Web page, then displays the ad across the entire browser area when users click to a new page. The resulting ad is identical to TV, whether the user has a high- or low-speed connection. The company says the technology evades pop-up blockers, but the person can skip the ad by clicking a box.
Unlike TV viewers, Internet users will not be deluged with these ads, at least in the short term. According to Unicast, 100 million ads will be served to individual PC's beginning tomorrow through the end of February. That may sound like a lot, but publishers, who can track a user's repeat trips to a Web site, say they will generally limit a person's exposure to the ads to one a day.
Unicast says it hopes 50 million to 75 million people will view the ads. Pepsi plans to distribute two ads, which have run on TV in the last few months. In one, titled "Just Lunch," a dog steals its owner's sandwich and Pepsi, and replaces them with a cat. In the other, "Vacuum," a vacuum cleaner hunts a Pepsi drinker and eats his pants. At the end of each, users will be shown links to more ads, on the Pepsi Web site. (Those ads use so-called streaming video technology of an older vintage, and are less than TV quality.)
Mr. Vail, of Pepsi, said he would monitor online viewers' reactions through a tracking study conducted by the research firm Dynamic Logic, to determine how much use Pepsi will make of such ads in the future. "Yes, it's intrusive," he said. "But I think customers will like it, because it will be so far superior to anything they've seen online."
James Nail, an analyst with the technology consulting firm Forrester Research, agreed. "This is the best full-motion, full-video TV ad technology that I've seen," he said. "I expect big demand from advertisers for this."
Among other features, Mr. Nail says he appreciates the fact that the ads do not slow Web surfing. The commercials load into a computer's temporary memory, and only when a page is idle. If a user clicks to a new page within the site before the ad is fully loaded, the process is merely paused until the browser is again idle. The ads run on Windows Media Player software, which an estimated 8 of 10 Internet users have on their computers.
Mr. Nail predicts that Internet users will react well to the ads, both because they can click away if they choose and because the advertisers involved have brands that "people have positive reactions to," he said, adding, "So I think they'll get a little more leeway, at least initially."
If users are annoyed at this development, they can blame high-speed connections. Richard V. Hopple, Unicast's chief executive, said he decided to release the company's "video commercial" technology now because high-speed connections - known as broadband - have reached significant numbers. The number of United States households with broadband connections reached 49.5 million late last year, or 38 percent of all households, accordi
When I try to go there, all I get is:
BLOCKED
This is Privoxy 3.0.2 on localhost.localdomain (127.0.0.1), port 8080, enabled
Request for blocked URL
Your request for http://www.unicast.com/ was blocked.
See why or go there anyway.
More Privoxy:
* Privoxy main page
* View & change the current configuration
* View the source code version numbers
* View the request headers.
* Look up which actions apply to a URL and why
* Toggle Privoxy on or off
* Documentation
Support and Service via Sourceforge:
We value your feedback. To provide you with the best support, we ask that you:
* use the support forum or (better) the mailing lists to get help.
* submit banners and all problems with the actions file only through the actions file feedback system.
* submit bugs only through our bug tracker. Make sure that the bug has not yet been submitted.
* submit feature requests only through our feature request tracker.
Blah blah blah...anti-advertising sentiment is so en-vogue with the Utne Reader crowd these days. I personally hate labels on my clothes, but I don't think that being a "walking billboard" for Nike is that big an issue.
For one thing, it easily backfires. Just look at the cutthroat world of hip-hop fashion, where wearing last year's label is akin to wearing white shoes after labor day. Companies can be at the top of fashion one year, and gone the next as the result of a single comment from a prominent figure. In this case, it's the community which drives the success of the brand, and not vica-versa. The prominence of the label is a double-edged sword. While it's popular, it's good advertising. When it's unpopular, it's poison.
For another, most of the clothing that features prominent labels does so as a result of consumer demand. What? Yes, people like others to know who made their clothing, because there's a common myth that certain name brands make better clothes. These same companies often make cloths that are without labels as well, and Nike is a good example -- I have three Nike running shirts, none of which have the logo. Incidentally (or is it coincidentally), these shirts were also more expensive than the ones with logos. It could be that the lack of a big logo coincides with a lack of a discounted price, in which case they *ARE* paying you to wear the logo. Lucky you, huh?
Besides, these days so much money is dumped into marketting and branding is so (obnoxiously) pervasive that a lot of brand names are synonymous with lifestyle choices. Think about Atari, Kool-Aid, Levis, Goya, Adidas, Apple, Phat Farm, Fender, and tell me you don't associate a personality with each.
A lot of people bemoan this aspect of modern culture, but I figure if it makes people happy to associate themselves thusly, why fight it? It's obvious that the Nikes and Coca-Colas of the world don't give a shit what the Adbusters crowd thinks of them. So don't waste the energy. If you don't like brand names on your body, do what I do: buy nice, solid, comfortable clothes from fair trade sources, chill out, and let everybody else do their thing. They're going to do it anyway.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Never hit these sites again!
...couldn't you just block shit like this with a proxy? Find out which URLs are sending the worhtless crap over and block the traffic.
Un-news
I don't think they'll work very well in my lynx-window. Unless they support aalib =P
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!