THE NEW YORK TIMES had an interesting piece today about how effective Internet multimedia can be as an advertising platform. Online advertising is nothing new, but more and more big media buyers are beginning to understand its true potential, especially when video is used as the creative and the target audience is young men.
Why?
Burger King sponsored one series of home videos run by heavy.com. The fast food giant’s king character masks were used by amateur videographers who were commissioned by the site to produce short videos. The use of sponsored imagery within the ecclectic creative productions has thusfar proved very successful. The Burger King series has been watched more than 9 Million times since September.
Other advertisers who have tapped into heavy.com’s audience of mostly 18-34 year old men include Virgin, Sony, Unilever, Verizon and NBC Universal. The site recieved 5.5 Million visitors in February alone, a threefold increase from last year’s figures. One reason for this would certainly be the growth in high speed access, as the site is light on written content and heavy on graphics, mulitmedia, audio and games.
All content is free for visitors, as the site makes its money from the ubiquitous advertising throughout the often funny, racy and parodic multimedia offerings on the site – the stuff that young men seemingly want, with or without in-your-face advertising messages.
