Commentary

Just An Online Minute... Web Ads As Entertainment

Marketing professionals still talk about "branding" and "direct" campaigns, but it's becoming clear that those categories can't capture the myriad types of ads in use--especially online.

Another sort of ad--one that seems more prevalent these days--is meant to be at least equal parts entertainment and promotion. Movie trailers, for instance, are among the most obvious example of this type of ad. Another example is this year's McDonald's "Lincoln french fry" campaign, which involved creating a phony blog by a fictional married couple that uncovered a McDonald's fry in the shape of Abraham Lincoln's profile.

Now, marketers apparently are clamoring for more of these sorts of campaigns. This morning, PointRoll issued a report--based on a survey of creative online advertising professionals--praising online ads that consumers want to engage and interact with. "Online ads increasingly function as a destination for online users, instead of as a doorway to a Web site," said Martin Betoni, PointRoll's art director, in the company's statement.

But the dark side to efforts that mesh entertainment with promotion is their potential to mislead consumers. While few people are likely to be fooled by entries posted to an obviously phony blog, other initiatives that push the creative envelope are harder to suss out. For instance, blogs written by corporate shills, pretending to critique a product but actually just touting it, might be very difficult to distinguish from a real consumer's postings.

Such misleading efforts seem almost guaranteed to build consumer mistrust that will outweigh any potential buzz about a product. In some circumstances that level of deception might not be legal. Just this week, consumer advocate group Commercial Alert asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether having shills pose as consumers in the offline world violates bans on deceptive advertising.

In the meantime, marketers would do well to remember that, while online ads can be destinations in themselves, they shouldn't try to trick consumers into thinking the ads are anything other than a creation of Madison Avenue.

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