The New Wave of Net Films: At their best, these branded movie shorts are entertaining, engaging, and great sales tools. At their worst, they're just overly long ads [...]
Internet films turn the TV advertising paradigm on its head. Instead of spending a few hundred thousand dollars producing a slick TV ad, and then tens of millions on airtime, advertisers are spending the big bucks -- in some cases millions -- to produce the short films and peanuts to distribute them on the Internet. When the films are good, consumers will seek them out.
The only danger is that Net films will become as ubiquitous as TV ads. If that happens, the sheer volume would mean that not even the good ones will stand out. For now though, most Net films beat the heck out of 99% of the ads we have to endure on TV -- and even stand up pretty well as short-form cinema. That's infotainment!
