It used to be that a TV commercial lasted only as long as its campaign cycle. But with the Web, there are now various ways in which consumers can watch TV ads long after the election is over.
Consumers (or company PR reps) upload the more clever TV spots to sites like YouTube or Google Video. Others, like AdvertisementAve.com and Adcritic.com, actually collect and archive TV ads for
posterity. Marketers, of course, also keep their ads--as do agencies, which want to show off their work. Bud Light even allows visitors to its Web site to email ads to friends or download them onto
their iPods. That the Web offers new ways to view ads more as content than commercial messages is the silver lining for advertisers in an age when digital technology enables consumers to skip past ads
with ease. And believe it or not, there's an actual market for traded TV commercials.
The New York Times likens the phenomenon to the trading of baseball cards. By making their commercials
available, advertisers are hoping they can extend their Super Bowl glory days to a new medium--but on a much smaller scale, of course. "The best compliment you can get these days is if you create an
ad entertaining enough that people want to virally share it and pass it on," says Karen Jones, vp for brand advertising and promotion for DHL. Some marketers, like Mountain Dew, are becoming
portal-like in the way they urge consumers to engage with their ads. On the MDTV section of its Web site, Mountain Dew commercials are ranked by popularity. MasterCard even created an entire Web site,
Priceless.com, for the ads from its long-running campaign. The ads are archived along with behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with the producers. The biggest example of the TV spot craze is
Anheuser-Busch. This year, the company promoted its Web sites heavily just before the Super Bowl, and nearly 22 million people saw the commercials. Later, the ads were found on more than 800 other Web
sites.
Read the whole story at The New York Times »
