CBS to run video ad in magazine this fall
NEW YORK--Broadcast network CBS will be advertising its fall TV season with a video-chip ad embedded in an issue of Entertainment Weekly.
The September 18 issue of the Time Inc.-owned magazine will feature the first video ad to appear in print, George Schweitzer, CBS marketing president, said Wednesday at a press conference at the company's headquarters here.
The ad with embedded video.
(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET)The ad will be launched in partnership with PepsiCo to promote Pepsi Max soda and the TV network's Monday prime-time lineup. Not everyone will be seeing it: the ad will appear in a magazine insert sent to subscribers in the New York and Los Angeles areas--an edition without the video chip will be sent to subscribers elsewhere and show up on newsstands.
The technology for the battery-powered ads was manufactured by a Los Angeles-based company called Americhip, and each ad can handle about 40 minutes of video.
Here are some more details about the Americhip technology: the screen, which is 2.7 millimeters thick, has a 320x240 resolution. The battery lasts for about 65 to 70 minutes, and can be recharged, believe it or not, with a mini USB cord--there's a jack on the back of it. The screen, which uses thin film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT LCD) technology, is enforced by protective polycarbonate. It's a product that has been in development at Americhip for about two years, spokesman Tim Clegg told CNET News via e-mail.
"It's leadership in innovation, which we really stress at CBS in every part of our company," Schweitzer said of the ads, which were developed with the collaboration of the Ignition Factory, a division of the Omnicom Group's OMD media agency.
PepsiCo has been experimenting with edgy, experimental ads for some time now, distributing millions of 3D glasses for its SoBe LifeWater Super Bowl ad earlier this year. It more recently launched a new Mountain Dew flavor by inviting prominent Twitter users to a party at a trendy Brooklyn venue.
Pepsi Max is the company's new diet soda geared toward men, advertised earlier this summer with bold print ads that declared, "Save the calories for bacon."
"The evolution of marketing television in the fall--it used to be as simple as this," Schweitzer said, holding up a vintage copy of TV Guide. "It was axiomatic in those days. If you took an ad in TV Guide, people watched your program. Not anymore."
Disclosure: CNET News is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS.
This post was updated at 1:38 p.m. PT with more details about Americhip's technology.
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
Hey. That's been said of all the new technologies that have come (and yep, some have gone).
"Nobody will like to hear actors talk". "If you want to see a movie, you'll go to the cinema". "You would want to watch a channel that just shows music."
Of course, only time will tell.
And why is it necessary to have a paragraph telling us about Pepsi Max? I don't care.
OLED? That's the only thin, flexible, energy efficent display I can think of. But it's not exactly cheap. Though Pepsi does have money to burn.
CC08- I like your thinking. Let's hack this thing.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5cd04e14-8cf4-11de-a540-00144feabdc0.html
It doesn't give a ton of details but more than you get here. It says they will use a liquid crystal display (Standard LCD), and the cost is estimated at several dollars per copy. This is opposed to the 9 cents per copy for a full page color ad.
I am disappointed that it is just using an LCD. I'm not sure how cool that will look plus I was hoping for something more exciting like OLED or re-arrangeable print. It sounds pretty lame.
I think the reason these companies are missing their audience is not just due to people skipping the ads with digital recording devices or going to the Internet. It's because people are so inundated with advertising that we've just tuned it out. We've gotten smarter. Even if this thing looks cool (I doubt it) people will look at it and say "Wow cool, but it's just Pepsi." Then they move on. There has a never been a way for marketers to directly show how that a given advertising campaign was successful. I suspect if you could show this you would see diminishing returns for existing brands. I don't think this will help CBS or Pepsi, but I sure would like to see one.
Sure it's more expensive, but it reaches a market that doesn't have a large online presence. Time will tell if the extra expense is sustainable.
There's something else too. I've never seen a video inside a magazine before. I've heard audio in Hallmark cards before. I've seen holograms on baseball cards that change pictures when you move it in different directions. But, I've never seen a video inside a magazine. It kind of reminds me of something from Harry Potter. You know, when he opens up the photo album and all the images are moving in action? Sounds pretty interesting to me. Being something I've never seen before, it made me want to go out and buy the magazine right now.
Reaching a much wider audience? Just because you have a video ad placed on CNET, doesn't mean people are going to look at it and be interested. Many people out there aren't even going to see an ad you place on CNET because they use adblock in their browsers. Besides, how many pages of content are there on CNET? Thousands. Much easier to find an ad in a magazine than it would be to find a specific ad on CNET. And a video ad on a website isn't a new piece of technology. Who cares? There aren't any articles on CNET about "OMG there's a new VIDEO ad somewhere on the web". Hurray?
If there was one on every 10th page, or one in every magazine, of course people would stop watching.
I guess i'll buy the magazine when it comes out, altough I never bought a entertainment weekly magazine before.
will keep my eye on hackaday.com for other purposes :)
cheers
"Not everyone will be seeing it: the ad will appear in a magazine insert sent to subscribers in the New York and Los Angeles areas--an edition without the video chip will be sent to subscribers elsewhere and show up on newsstands."
Looks like a last-ditch act of desperation.
Because i couldn't really think of anything innovative that CBS has ever done.
I guess with CNet as an asset, they can consider themselves slightly technological.
- by August 19, 2009 12:27 PM PDT
- Holy ****! This is the future! I love it!
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