I prefer to call advertising opportunities on Joost as customer interaction platforms, as it helps me constantly remind myself of the amount of reinventing we need to do to move away from traditional advertising formats.Ilya Vedrashko has a great post on the kind of opportunities Joost is throwing-up:
- NY Times: “Some advertising on Joost will resemble traditional 30-second television spots.” This is one such spot for Wrigley’s Eclipse gum showing between two Joost videos.
- Joost has a built-in search engine that allows users to find videos by typing in titles, artist’s names, or keywords (it seems that Joost relies on file metadata to identify content instead of indexing the audio or video streams themselves). Ad spots are no different: if you are interested in seeing all commercials by Wrigley, they will come up in the search results.
- Hand Raisers -This is the so-called hand-raiser: if you see something you like on the screen — a commercial or any other video — you can activate the top area of the screen and a small window will slide down to display more information about whatever it is you are watching. Eventually, advertisers should be able to place all kinds of interactive content in this space, from polls to games to web links. According to NY Times, “Joost users will also be invited to provide information about themselves and their personal interests. That will allow advertisers to steer their ads to individual Joost viewers, avoiding some of the wasted spending that occurs with conventional television, when people with no interest in a certain product sit through the commercials.
- ”One of the most interesting features of Joost is its widgets menu. Already, you can chat with other people who are watching the same channel, or IM friends on your Google Talk contact list, or rate individual videos, or use Joost as an RSS reader.