Virtual, Virtuous

I S THE Internet killing the TV star? Not quite may be but the great TV commercial has already found another place to run. Microsoft Network India’s Desk Top TV can do what regular TV can do. And it’s one more innovation that is helping to breathe life in the form of ad revenues into the medium. MSN has over 150 advertisers who are buying spots on its desktop TV to run their ad commercials
In fact, Internet TV can run your commercial just the way you want it. Remember Pepsi’s the three part webisode last year that featured Shahrukh Khan on Yahoo! for an entire week preceding the TV commercial. This was for the first time in India that an Internet commercial was produced simultaneously with the television commercial.
What I hear from the grapevine is that Tata Indicom’s recent viral film (pmsproblems.com) is likely to be adapted for television commercials. Earlier it was internet that was adapting from TV and now it seems like a reversal trend is likely to be set in.
The Internet offers a more defined user and technology helps to accurately track the user’s interaction with the brand much better than TV watching monitoring products Online advertising is fast offering options to advertisers that come closer to realising their dreams—to reach out to the potential customer at the lowest cost. While technology boosts the process partly, the understanding of the positioning and creative potential of the medium is fine-tuning its usage. However, Gregory Coleman, Executive Vice President, Global Sales says: “ Answer to a video ad on the Internet is not a 30 seconds or 60 seconds commercial. The video ads on the net need to be short and crisp so that it attracts the surfers attention instantly.”
Look at Google for instance. Not so long back, search advertising—those annoying ads that popped up while you were trying to find data for your research project—was most disruptive. But now Google's search advertising product, AdWords, is a performance-based model where clients pay per click. Ads pop up at relevant moments. So when you search for say, cheap tickets to Mumbai ads of budget air lines and travel agents come along the side bar.
Then there’s advergaming almost synonymous with Contest2Win that creates games around brands and their messages. You play and win or lose. But the advertiser always win as you absorb his brand message as you game.
As the role of the Internet evolves in the life of users—from a mailing medium initially to a search and interactive medium— it evolves as an advertising channel too. So for instance, as consumers use it increasingly to get information before making purchase decisions, the advertiser is understanding the need to fine-tune his brand message.
For advertisers, the internet has evolved from a fancy add-on to an essential part of the media mix. Innovation—both in the creative content as well as placement—has become the order of the day. Graphically richer ads, dynamic and extendable banners, better copy and catch phrases as well as strategic positioning are here and improving every day. These innovations have brought online advertising back from the edge