VITAMEDIAS
That’s advertainment! Commercial vignettes packaged as mini-movies are the latest advertising fad
Call them advertainment, branded content or brand clips, commercials vignettes that are packaged like mini-movies and barely mention the advertiser’s name are a fast-growing trend. In recent months, marketers as diverse as the retailer Aeropostale, Nike and Skyy Vodka have produced longer commercials that look more like something you’d see at an independent film festival than on TV.
Get Ready For the Obnoxious Online Ad Parade
But get used to it, folks. Web advertising is getting ruder and noisier by the week. That's because the Internet ad industry is in total turmoil, still struggling after eight years to establish standards for what advertising should be. As Web publishers continue their hunt for the Internet's version of TV commercials, we find ourselves with front-row seats in a long-running experiment that we can only hope doesn't end badly.
Now the show is about to get even more boisterous. Over the past few months, the leading Internet portals -- MSN, Yahoo and America Online -- have loosened restrictions on how much audio, video and animation they allow advertisers to display. That, in turn, is encouraging advertisers to experiment with even more interruptive formats, including video, talking characters, floating logos and animations that mimic video by presenting still images in animated sequences like flip cards.