Market Seen for Ads on Demand
NEW YORK — Evading commercials is a way of life for most television watchers--isn’t that what the remote control is for? But a new crop of Web sites is proof that people will go out of their way to watch creative, humorous ads.
The idea that advertising can be entertaining has been helped by the willingness of high-profile Hollywood directors such as the Coen brothers and Spike Lee to make commercials. Some 30-second ads are more short-form art than hard sell.
The development of “adver-tainment†could become especially important to marketers as more consumers get access to technology such as that by TiVo Inc. that lets them skip over boring ads. That will challenge the ad business to create ads that consumers really want to see.
“That’s the future--advertising on demand,†said Jack Myers, editor in chief of the media newsletter Jack Myers Report.
With high-speed Internet access becoming more pervasive, the Web is becoming the main focus of advertising on demand. Companies are increasingly advertising their products on their own sites.
Two sites have been set up that aim to put all major advertisers’ commercial spots in one place on the Web. These are Ads.com (www.ads.com) and AdCritic.com (www.adcritic.com), which offer a dizzying array of 30-second spots, encompassing virtually every ad shown on television.
Neither site would disclose its traffic, but both said viewership is growing rapidly.
Ads.com doesn’t charge users who visit the site. The site’s developers, whose financial backing includes the venture capital arm of media conglomerate News Corp., hope to turn a profit by selling links to advertisers and pooling consumer data.
They already have secured access to ads from scores of advertisers and spent years securing the legal clearance from the Screen Actors Guild, which manages royalties for performers.
“There are a bunch of things consumers want to find on the Web when an ad has caught their interest--if they missed the 800 number or couldn’t read the fine print or wanted to know what the music was,†said Ads.com President and Chief Executive John Atcheson.
The newly relaunched AdCritic.com is a $69-a-year site. Although it is aimed at advertising professionals, anyone can subscribe. The original free incarnation of the site, though wildly popular, drowned in red ink because of the cost of streaming video to millions of viewers.
“It’s the bandwidth--the more people who come to the site to view ads, the more you, the site owner, pay,†said David Klein, editorial and publishing director for the Ad Age Group. Ad Age, a unit of privately held publisher Crain Communications Inc., bought the AdCritic site from founder Peter Beckman.
Both sites offer a slew of ads from traditional viewer favorites such as Anheuser-Busch Cos., Volkswagen and Gap Inc.
Despite the popularity of such ads, some advertising experts question whether an entertaining commercial is necessarily an effective one, even if viewers go out of their way to watch it.
“They’re not looking for dishwashing liquid or paper towel [ads],†said Klein of Ad Age. “People are looking for funny ads--Volkswagen, Nike, Budweiser.â€
If consumers can evade boring commercials with ease--and some products are not well-suited to ads that are entertaining--the ad world could be turned on its head, industry watchers said. Some of the funds that go to TV could be redirected to marketing outlets such as sporting event sponsorships and in-store promotions.
“There are two categories of ads consumers like: the ones that run year after year and the ads that are incredibly entertaining in the moment and are quickly forgotten,†said Mark DiMassimo of DiMassimo Brand Advertising. “It is not enough, nearly, to be entertaining. If it was, this business would be so easy.â€
