Yahoo Begs Marketers to Put TV Commercials Online. I Puke But Understand.

(Half the fun of this post is the hyperlinked videos to punctuate the copy).

Below is an ad from a trade magazine, where Yahoo let’s advertisers know their television ads can move online. My immediate reaction (after I puked and rinsed my vomit) was that Yahoo is basically teaching advertisers and brands to annoy its users. Not a good long-term strategy.

Hey, marketer. Hey, marketer. Hey, marketer. Send us your TV spots and money. Hey, marketer.

Then again, Yahoo has long shown it knows its REAL audience is not the silly fools who visit the site, but those that give it money. Yahoo has partnered with larger content providers, fetched large integrated advertising dollars like Fagin’s army of orphans, and countered You “animal farts” Tube with promises of advertising-safe content not user-generated content.

So Yahoo goes after the path of least resistance. It’s not an entirely reckless move. If you’re an online property and see the vast majority of marketing dollars going into television… why not be “an online television set”? It’s easier for marketers to understand, and for lazy media buyers to spend without a lot of work.

No seriously. Prerolls make me obsessed with brands.

Consider the mind of the marketer:

  • My VP keeps asking me to shift dollars to online. I don’t want to hassle with a dumb ass branded Facebook page.
  • Wait- I don’t have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars customizing my content for the medium?
  • I can just have my “Agency of Record” account lead tell his production people to send the Yahoo people a compressed version of our :30 and :60 spots?
  • Then I shift some of my budget allocation? Sign me up. Yey prerolls!

Meanwhile, the consumer is silently skipping or indulging the ads with despise (even the dumbest online site won’t measure or share data on how prerolls have negative impact on brand sentiment). The hapless user/viewer is forced to watch television ads before and during the content they want. Suddenly they start drifting away from Yahoo, and looking for less obnoxious ways to get content and entertainment.

It’s a smart, strategic way to spur a shift of media dollars, even if it comes at the expense of Yahoo’s other target audience (the users and viewers).

Will it work? It might bring some fast revenue, but its sustainability requires a) the non-ad content being so incredible that Yahoo viewers tolerating this, and b) if Yahoo can use this approach as a buyer “hook,” then quickly adapts the ad content to make it engaging (something the ad promises, but is not as easy as repurposing television spots).

A more sustainable approach would be to partner with firms that can create “branded entertainment” (whatever that means to you), or set up rich media entertainment with non-intrusive but inviting ads (the Seven Echo model). But really… does Yahoo have the time or patience for that?

5 thoughts on “Yahoo Begs Marketers to Put TV Commercials Online. I Puke But Understand.”

  1. No.
    Yahoo’s business model has always been sanguine – grab the shiny thing n’ run.

    They are a company that cares little about the consumer unless the consumer is generating dollars for them. That practice stems from Yahoo being in survival mode since Google hatched – that’s a long time.

    It’s been treading water so long it’s become a shark that mindlessly eats anything that comes its way regardless of substance.

    Yahoo will become a zombie company.
    Oh, the irony.

    It’s hard to wash the stench of death off any business.
    Yahoo has been marked forever after turning in a Chinese dissident who was executed for practicing free speech. That deed would give any business the reputation of, ‘Watch your back for we will stab it.’

    Most companies would not only have changed their policies they would have changed there name, but Yahoo doesn’t generate enough of anything else worthwhile, but its name.

    Google on the other hand learned from Yahoos mistake, its resent PR on China was very smart, consumerwise.

    Here’s the real reason Yahoo is reaching out for the quick buck.

    March 9, 2010 BW
    “US companies will spend more this year on digital and online advertising and marketing than on print for the first time ever.”

    Yahoo’s business motto is, “It’s business, now f*ck you!
    ya hoooooo ooo!”

    sorry, if this sounds a bit angry, I don’t really care much about or for yahoo, haven’t for years, but what I so brazenly wrote above is pretty much true.

    If the economy wasn’t so crappy Yahoo would have been sold by now. As the economies around the world collapse you can bet Yahoo’s kicking themselves hard for not taking Microsoft up on their $44B offer.

  2. @2 haha
    @3 historically a lot longer, in modern era big time, since Reagan.

    Think we’re ready to say enough yet?

    Click my blog and scroll to “The Fall of Lehman Brothers Video 1- 6” for a peek at how it all works. It’s nothing, but fraud and theft now and it’s in y/our face.

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