Gmail Theater: Looks low budget, cost $1.65 billion!
by Thea - February 20th, 2007 4:38 pm
For those still questioning the acquisition of YouTube by Google several months ago, I offer this rationale: Gmail Theater.
With an extremely low budget, paper clips and office supplies-style of puppetry, YouTube viewers are subjected to a four act play of sorts, explaining four benefits of using Gmail.
Entertaining: yes. But it sparks may debates regarding targeted marketing, and social media outlets harboring commercials and advertisers. Everywhere you go on the web, no matter how ‘free’ the viral video clip may be, chances are you will have to watch a 15-30 second commercial first. The cutesy, lo-fi approach from this Google YouTube collaboration totals over four minutes! We would never tolerate that length of time on TV (not even during the much coveted Super Bowl ads) so why is this type of targeted marketing acceptable on the web?
In the world of online marketing and SEO/SEM, this is marketing genius. In the real world of ‘I watch YouTube for cool virals, not commercials’, it’s like clicking on an innocent looking link and being redirected to a porn site. If that’s your thing (!), it wont bother you and you’ll find it entertaining. If it’s not, and it happens often enough, you may take the term ‘going postal’ to a new level not seen since Michael Douglas in Falling Down.
As the internet grows exponentially, the greedy advertisers and seedy SEM link ninjas (yours truly especially) look for new ways to target traffic and give more exposure to our clients. It’s inevitable that the next new thing will be harped on and exploited by all kinds for all purposes. Google paid $1.65 billion for this kind of exposure. Thankfully, we don’t charge as much!
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