Webmercials – Where did they come from?

by Darcie King

By now in our lives, we are used to commercials. Even though we are a “fast-forward” society, we still get those catchy jingles stuck in our heads or find ourselves discussing the latest famous footwear ad around the water cooler. We run from commercials, yet we still find them endearing.

Now video is turning to the web. While many people find this a new phenomenon (like the lady at the networking event last night – “you mean we can put video on our website? What a great idea! I never realized you can do that!”), it has been around for some time. And the funny part is that while video on the web takes either a more “amateur” approach or informative approach than your average TV commercial, people WANT to watch it! More & more people are flocking to YouTube each day to see the latest videos. It’s almost like the Superbowl lasts all year! Just like there really is content around the Superbowl commercials (yes –there IS a football game going on), there is content around the online video. The trick is to make it relevant and turn viewers into readers…yes, an increasingly more difficult task these days…but it is possible.

Ignoring the fact that some major broadcasting companies dabbled in video earlier than the little guy, companies started producing video specifically for the web as early as 1998 . Online video primarily started out as a form of broadcasting sporting & other events. Kim Brame, Executive Producer of creative illusions Productions, shared her history with me. “We worked for corporate sponsors of the teams, athletes and the events. We normally interviewed the sponsored athletes at these events, especially when the athletes were working with charity projects.” The primary audience for webcasts such as these were the fans, which created a very targeted, specific audience and application of video online. Trade shows also offered an opportunity for early webcasting. They would stream key speakers for those that could not attend. Another application was for stock holder meetings in the telecom, medical & technology fields.

It wasn’t until 1999 when KMGI introduced what they called the “webmercial.” According to Profit Magazine in September of 2000, KMGI defined a webmercial as a “quality, 5 to 7 second online commercial that would load and run almost instantly on the slowest modems.” These were mostly graphic based animated clips intended to spark interest in a particular product or service.

Also in 1999, Interstitial ads became popular. An interstitial ad is a short animation that plays while a web page is loading. It was meant to make use of the slow load time during the early internet days and displayed ads in a more dynamic nature than a static graphic. Typically this is a pop-up screen, which is mostly not accepted these days, but was considered “cutting-edge” at the time. Some interstitials even included audio & video clips as well. According to Smartcomputing.com’s January 2000 article, the ‘interstitial ad is designed to bridge the gap between TV and the Internet for corporations and viewers alike.” Already you can see the trend for the internet to move toward a video-based platform. Unfortunately, the interstitial ad too quickly became known as “intrusive” and went the way of the laser disc…a good idea, but bad application.

An Indian company began using Webmercials in 2000. They defined a webmercial as “a full-screen presentation that combines the elements of a television commercial with the interactivity, target marketing, direct sales features of the Internet,” according to dzinegarage.com. Now, here’s where the fun begins. The “webmercial” is trying to one-up the TV commercial. With something as successful as television advertising, do you think advertisers are going to move their money to the same thing, different location? Not right away – the webmercial still needs some evolving still. Smaller companies and individuals also started to dabble in the world of online video in 2000. That is when it started to get interesting. Let me repeat that – smaller companies and INDIVIDUALS also started to dabble in the world of online video. Yes, Individuals. That is what makes internet video so wild – let’s take a closer look.

Kevin Darbro, a marketing copywriter & creative consultant, produced his first webmercial in 2000, but he has never heard of the word webmercial before! He and his team were playing around with creative ways to get their message out and found video to be a fun way to do so. These videos were used in an email campaign & featured fictional products. According to Kevin, “these videos were fun to make and the people seemed to enjoy them. I don’t know if they were very effective in selling, but in the pre-YouTube dyas, we certainly were giving it a go!” Huh…..the “little guy” was putting video online before YouTube? Interesting….

I love this article written in 2000 in the Baltimore Sun. Michael James used the headline “Tired of TV ads? Look for ‘webmercials’ sneaking into your computer.” If that doesn’t tell you the public’s feeling on these early webmercials, I don’t know what would! No one wants TV commercials coming into other areas of their lives! These early commercials on the web were met with much resistance, to say the least.

Sometime between 2000 & 2004, the "webmercial" started changing. The evolutionary process took hold and stopped producers from trying to copy TV ads, but rather adapt video to use on the increasingly more popular & more user-generated web content. At an event videographer’s convention in 2001, the questions was asked “how many of you have a website?” Probably about 50% of the room raised their hands. That was a little surprising, seeing as the web was beginning to be THE place to do business. However, more shocking, when the question was asked (of VIDEOGRAPHERs mind you) “how many have VIDEO on your website?” only about 20 or so people in the room of 500 raised their hands! (That’s roughly 4% for you mathematically challenged.) Two years later, the same questions were asked again. Now it was nearly 100% for those with websites and roughly 50% for those with video. Getting better, but not there yet. NOW? Try looking up videographer’s websites – if they don’t have video – send them an email….they must have fallen asleep in 2004 & aren’t awake yet.

Kim Brame attributes this sudden change in online video to the availability of broadband internet connections. “There are many things that worked for television that for about 6 years did not work well online. Then Broadband became the norm and everything old was new again! The proliferation of Broadband is allowing us to produce productions for companies that could not afford our services even 10 years ago, because ‘on air time’ is and was too expensive for them. Now they have a cost effective platform to get their message out to the masses.”

Kristopher King of E Video Productions began producing video online in 2004. “In our experience, some of the early companies putting video on the web were those that need to SHOW their product or service in action. Our first video production geared specifically to the web was for a DJ company.” Early videos were primarily short promotional pieces. They were more of a moving photograph put to music than a television style commercial. While staying true to the internet people were already getting used to, these videos accompanied traditional web pages with the user choosing to click to play the video rather than letting it auto-start or pop-up in a separate window. This more user-friendly content invited the audience in rather than turn them away.

Tammy Graham, a director of Web Marketing Strategies for Web Marketing Communications, had a similar approach when she started using online video in 2005. Early experiences in online video were the more informative video clips, rather than trying to copy the TV ad. These videos, rarely found on the home page, helped to illustrate specific details of a website, rather than force a hard sell. Video interviews were also used in the launching of the movie “The Last Tomb of Jesus” by James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici. These online interviews were used to launch the site and followed the release of the film.

In 2006, more & more companies started embracing the idea of the webmercial. Today’s webmercial has various forms: from the traditional TV commercial, the original notion of the 6 second clip, the information piece and the creative attention grabbing commercial made specifically for web use. According to Douglas White, founder of Prosperity Research, “video tells a story better than text; (video) holds the eyes better; (video) crosses language and culture better.” Kim Brame continues to use video to this day & has adapted since her early use of online video in 1998. Her videos today “are a perfect marketing too. We compare them to products that we have produced for 27 years which were limited in where they could be used and who the audience was.” Online video has so many options! From video-sharing, to comments, user generate content and even the ability to put on DVD, webmercials & all their brothers and sisters are taking the internet by storm in 2009. Flash back to the question “how many of you have video on your website?” I predict in 2009, a majority of websites, not just videographers, but all business websites, will have video by the end of the year.

Today’s webmercial can be seen on sites including Fortun 500 companies, a three person technology startup, local restaurants, authors, national and local charities, individual corporate coaches, small towns, famous dance teams, Chamber of Commerces, builders, expos and trade shows, global corporations, mining and foresting and even online news publications to name a few. Most webmercials use Flash technology – a very clean and highly compatible way of showcasing online. According to Kristopher King, With the advent of flash video, pixilation all but disappeared and audio is basically CD quality.”

If you have questions about putting video on the web, please contact our contributers Kim Brame at kcbrame@creativeillusions.biz, Tammy Graham at tammy@webmarketingcommunications.com or Kristopher King at kris@evideoproductions.net.

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