The TV industry continues to go on and on about how forced viewing of linear ads is just fine and advertisers should keep paying for all that wasted exposure, etc. But they had better watch out! Advertisers, like Ford in this case, are looking for alternatives, and some of those alternatives are going to be interesting content. Likewise, content creators, although most of them assume they need the layers of TV network executives to “protect” them from the corruptions of advertising, are beginning to see some advertisers as the funders of creative freedom (shameless plug of my blog: http://awordfromoursponsor.wordpress.com/2012/10/27/branded-entertainment-creative-freedom/).

And as Greg points out so clearly, there is also a legacy media industry assumption that forced exposure means that ads don’t have to be interesting. Given audience mobility today, that’s like assuming that the sun goes around the earth! (http://awordfromoursponsor.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/youtubes-truview-and-legacy-medias-resistance-to-change/)

Ford looks smart, no?

It seems to absolutely be the case that the future of advertising relies, in part, on creating what I call “destination ads” in the post here. As the article linked to above (hyperlink: “seek out”) indicates, the most popular ads on a hub like YouTube garner an incredible number of views–and from folks who are actively looking for them, and are thus more likely to watch them (a) in their entirety, (b) with rapt attention, and (c) repeatedly. I can think of no better ad strategy than creating that type of content!

Glad to hear the campaign did well–it can be rather difficult, as a scholar, to uncover the “real” numbers or metrics of this stuff. Though I watched the series on YouTube, I was first exposed to it (repeatedly) during ad breaks during a couple of my favorite Zynga iPhone games!

Thanks again for commenting–you made my week (month?)!

The industry is a weird place right now, because our collective attitude toward media is so schizophrenic. TV bring different expectations about propriety and transparency than the web does, and so traditional TV spots can still be produced with an understanding that there’ll be a suspension of disbelief. It’s a more forgiving medium.

The web is of course, not that way. Anyone can beat anyone else in the content creation game: you can’t assume anyone gives a crap enough to watch your stuff to the end. Too often, traditional advertising sees being interesting as a luxury… which is stupid. Like Howard Gossage said “People read (or in this case watches) what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.”

Consciously trying to be interesting, useful, funny… trying to be something that someone was glad to experience, I think that is where advertising is headed. It has to!

As far as where people watched this content, YouTube was actually a small part of the story. The episodes were syndicated across the web. YouTube merely served as a central hub. Without going into numbers and success measures, the content did pretty well.