A weekly UPI series examining the global telecommunications phenomenon known as the World Wide Web.
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CHICAGO, Feb. 11 (UPI) -- New technology is enabling advertisers to take pop-up ads on the Web a step further -- turning them into commercials with animation, audio and even video, and making it more difficult for online users to perform the equivalent of changing the channel.
Technology developed by Microsoft Corp. and Unicast Corp., which is being tested over the next month or so on major sites online around the globe, provides full-screen, TV-style, 30-second ads online for major brands like Honda, Pepsi and others.
"TV-style commercials are the next thing that advertisers are trying to test on the Internet," Rachel Pickett, director of media services at Tocquigny Advertising Interactive+Marketing in Austin, Texas, told United Press International.
The reason for this is quite straightforward from a technological and economical point of view, she said.
"Advertising banners on the Internet are not as effective as they once were," Pickett explained. "So advertisers are looking for an evolution, and are integrating sound and video into online advertising."
The key to the deployment of the ads is Microsoft's Windows Media 9, which enables broadcast-quality ads of up to 2 megabytes to play on a personal computer screen. The ads run at 30 frames per second, the same as network TV and an improvement from the streaming video first used online, which presented a herky, jerky style video image that is unnerving to some viewers.
Creative advertisers also are grabbing consumers using this kind of technology while their PCs are logging on to the Web.
"When you log into Netzero or Juno (Internet service providers), there is always dead-time," said Mark Goldston, chairman, president and chief executive officer of United Online Inc., an Internet advertising firm in West Lake Village, Calif. "We've taken that dead time, and turned it into time to play a commercial."
Customers are presented with a TV-like graphical user interface, or GUI, and are shown the ads, such as movie trailers from clients like Disney.
"At the bottom of the screen, in text, you see a status bar that tells you that the computer is accessing the network, or verifying the password, but on the screen, you see the movie trailer," Goldston said.
Many advertisers are simply re-purposing ads from TV and cable, and playing them on the Web but others are taking the technology even further.
A New York City agency that works with British Airways shot extra footage while producing a TV spot for the London-based airline and uses it to create a veritable video catalog of features and benefits for the carrier.
"Depending upon a client's objectives, sometimes taking a 30-second spot and applying it online can work just fine," said Stacey Nachtaler, president of an online agency in New York City called itraffic, a unit of agency.com.
"But sometimes, you have to adapt it," she told UPI.
Nachtaler said advertisers increasingly are paying attention to how consumers "consume" online media when crafting their online marketing strategies.
"You have to ask what is the client doing online -- why are they going online," she said.
Nachtaler noted the typical British Airways customer is a "C level" executive: a chairman or CEO of his or her company.
"They've been trying to market their flatbed (sleeper) seats, which cost $5,000 round trip, to this audience. They're also trying to move their ticket sales online," Nachtaler said. "So that means that we had to influence what the offline commercial would look like, but also obtain footage that we could use online, giving the prospective customers deeper, more interactive information. We had to give them a way to explore what it was like to use the flatbed seat."
Nachtaler said her agency conducted focus groups with clients to help understand their questions about the flatbed seating.
"TV does a good job at a high level of creating awareness of the product," she continued. "But we developed deeper interaction in the online ads. We demonstrated the features, how it works."
The TV-style ads are very short, too. "Thirty-second spots are sometimes too long for the online audience. There's only so much the viewer can take online," Nachtaler said. "Sometimes, 15 seconds works more effectively."
She observed, however, the online video has generated a higher "click-to-book ratio" -- meaning greater sales for the airline.
These developments in technology should help online advertising continue to garner "an increased amount of attention in media budgets of advertisers," said Paul Kadin, executive vice president of marketing and strategy at eyeblaster.com, an advertising technology firm.
"Big brand advertisers are used to spending most of their budget on TV," Kadin told UPI. "But now their investments in TV spending can be redeployed to online. That will help build the brand, get a direct response, or promote something, and get a vital interest in it."
Over the coming years, Kadin said he expects this trend to become even more marked, as companies develop truly interactive commercials for the Web.
"The real power will come with the combination of video and interactive elements," Kadin said. "Imagine a video commercial where you can click on it and interact or engage with it. It will be a two-way experience. It's clear that's where people are going."
Now that the economy is growing again, and companies are willing to spend on technology -- more so than they were during the past two years -- there likely will be more innovations.
Producers also are getting smarter about positioning ads for potential placement online.
Goldston noted that in the past, advertisers did not negotiate with talent, actors, writers or directors for the rights to broadcast ads online, as well as on TV. That required a whole new negotiation for each commercial.
"But now it is becoming a standard article in a contract -- the right to broadcast on the Web" Goldston said.
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Gene Koprowski covers the Internet for UPI Science News. E-mail [email protected]
