Sprint Takes Over YouTube Home Page With UG Human Clock

Sprint YouTube Sprint is expected to take over Google's YouTube home page for 24 hours this week in a groundbreaking ad campaign that highlights a human clock.

The campaign, which emphasizes Sprint's "Now Network," will embed user-generated content in the masthead -- a first for masthead ads running on YouTube. Those who want to participate are assigned a number, and use a Web camera to shoot the video and add themselves to the clock.

The numbers are strung together in a series of video vignettes placed in a digital clock to represent the time. For example, at 12:09 the ad would display four people, each holding up one number to represent "1," "2," "0" and "9." As seconds, minutes and hours click by, the user-generated videos change based on the time zone.

Candice Wolken, digital advertising manager at Sprint, called the ad "very appropriate" for YouTube because it relies on user-generated videos to emphasize the "Now Network," because "it's all about 'Now.'"

Videos could appear several times during the 24 hours that the ad will run. Sprint will screen all videos as they are uploaded to the site. The ad will become a widget at sprint.com/nownetwork -- which provides the local time in multiple ways -- as well as facts and figures about hair growth, planes in the air, top searches on Google, tweets on Twitter, shopping days until Christmas, and a staggering amount of other minutiae.

Goodby Silverstein & Partners took the lead on the creative. Rather than suggest that Sprint has the Now Network, the agency demonstrates the meaning, Wolken said. The campaign has focused on a variety of innovations happening on its network at any given moment to position Sprint's network as a technology leader.

YouTube's standard home page masthead, 960 x 250, which launched in January, sits above the fold on the home page. A tandem unit -- 300 x 250 -- placed just below on the right can interact with it. A recent ad for McDonald's provides an example. The new formats also have been tested by Lionsgate and Volvo, which ran a live Twitter feed in the ad.

"We needed to figure out a way to embrace rich media on our home page, especially with the growth of impressions and more than 11 million unique users visiting the U.S. home page daily," said Zal Bilimoria, product manager for the home page at YouTube. "On average, these rich media masthead units have 14% interaction rates, compared to the industry average noted by DoubleClick for similar-size units of just under 5%."

YouTube has already sold and run mastheads in 12 countries, although the format officially launched just three months ago. About 17 advertisers such as Electronic Arts, Apple, Las Vegas, ABC, Universal, Lionsgate, Honda, Verizon, Sony and Nike have tapped the format. Several chose to buy it more than once.

Fox ran a home page masthead ad across YouTube home pages in 11 countries to coincide with the launch of "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," making it the largest deal for YouTube in EMEA by cost and geography for a campaign running on one day.

1 comment about "Sprint Takes Over YouTube Home Page With UG Human Clock".
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  1. Neil Bibbins from AutoRevenue, May 11, 2009 at 9:23 a.m.

    "Goodby Silverstein & Partners took the lead on the creative..."

    Oh please. http://www.humanclock.com/clock.php has done this for years. All these guys did was rip off an idea and peddle it to Sprint.

    Neil

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