As seen on TV, 30-second video commercials are coming to an Internet site near you, according to international reports.
Online ad company Unicast will debut a new format for advertisers today, allowing them to display television commercials on the Net, using online video technology from Microsoft. According to Unicast, this allows advertisers to take assets that they already know to be effective to another medium.
Reuters reports that companies are hunting for more effective ways to reach consumers, as their core model of broadcast television advertising loses ground to other media outlets. Internet ad spending is expected to grow at least 12% in 2004, fuelled by an improved economy, a rise in Internet use and the development of technology that makes it easier to post and track Web ads, according to TNS Media Intelligence/CMR, a market research firm.
The "Video Commercial" format uses Windows Media Player to deliver television-like video online and Unicast technology, which downloads the full-screen commercial into a browser and waits until a user moves between pages to play the ad.
AT&T, McDonald`s and Pepsi are among the advertisers running commercials online in a six-week trial on sites including ESPN.com, ABCNews.com and MSN.com.
The format has a "close" button so users already irritated by pop-ups and other Internet ads can turn the commercial off. Internet sites can also control when, where and how frequently an ad will play.
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