Tuesday, January 20, 2004
The next wave in web advertising, only it doesn't seem to work
Unicast is extremely proud to introduce the long-awaited Video Commercial—the new online ad format that delivers full screen, television-quality video for advertisers.
The 2 MB, 30-second spots exhibit broadcast—not broadband—quality video larger than any other format and allows advertisers to build interactivity into their sophicsticated offline assets.
Delivered via our patented, fully pre-cached method, the Video Commercial is the only formst that plays perfectly for every consumer, every time up to 8 times faster than broadband video.
If there are typos in the above quote, it's my fault, since the text is being rendered by Flash, which of course means you can't cut-n-paste.
Okay, who let the marketers out? And why does anyone listen to them? Every consumer? Every time?
Now I'm curious. I read further into the site:
30-seconds of pure video and expanded interactivity shown perfectly to every consumer every time.
Use full-screen, broadcast quality video to bring your advertising messages online. The [2 MB] Video Commercial plays without any ‘freezing’ or ‘buffering’ and up to 8 times faster than most broadband video units to ensure your campaigns play as well on the Internet as they do on Television.
Somebody better call John Ashcroft—these people are obviously smoking something illegal. Eight times faster than broadband, and at broadcast quality? Okay, this I have to see. I selected the “View Examples” link:
Warning
Your browser does not accept cookies. You must enable cookies to continue with this demo.
Okay, so there goes their claim of “every consumer, every time.” Didn't work for me. So it's not “every time.” And I could have sworn I had cookies enabled. Yup. I do. Okay, I enabled cookies based upon privacy settings of “medium,” so I crank the setting down to the lowest setting possible and reload the page.
Warning
Your browser does not accept cookies. You must enable cookies to continue with this demo.
Okay … damn the security, full cookies ahead!
Warning
Your browser does not accept cookies. You must enable cookies to continue with this demo.
Well heck!
If they can't get this to work under Windows XP and Mozilla, then there is no way they can claim “every consumer, every time.” No XXXXXXX way. I tried all the formats, all the demos, and not one worked for me. Not one!
I hope no one paid these jokers any money.
Then again, I'm not using IE …
Like I said, who let the marketers out? And who's responsible for listening to them?
Can you verb a noun? Or even a website?
Spring setup the account. Surprising, to say the least.
Actually, I had given it some thought to mirror my entries here in my own LiveJournal account (which I use to leave comments, and my friends page is a handy way to keep up with a dozen or two friends who also have LiveJournals) but really, I like the idea that I only post to my LiveJournal once a year.
The only problem I see is that now it's all too easy to see when I actually write these entries (I tend to predate entries quite often).
