Ran into a silly YouTube popup ad today which got me thinking about the viability of intrusive advertising operating on the element of surprise.
This YouTube popup is a crafty page reveal seamlessly designed to look like a YouTube video gone wild, accomplished with jQuery-enabled transparency controls that mount a fake video precisely over the regular video content area. When you hit the play button on the "video" it actually starts playing Flash-created content that often creates the illusion of moving imagery breaking out of the confines of the video area. This common type of ad creative in metro news websites is now executed with a twist on YouTube.
The popup I encountered was a promo for the film The Thing, part of a promotional blitz in advance of the film's opening day (two days from the date of this post). For the paid link placement, there are 7 different variations of content advertising various ersatz videos, all of which have irresistible YouTube-ish themes ("Baby goes nuts over food"… "Sexy girl in very small bikini" etc.). I imagine the agency who created this campaign have a pool going with the analytics… winner-take-all for whoever guesses the ad copy that gains the biggest billings.
This kind of thing is solidly positioned in a grey area of advertising best practices. On the one hand, any time you are taken out of your chosen experience on the web it usually engenders a negative reaction from the end user. On the other, anyone who's been using the web for more than a week or so should be able to identify a sponsored link, and be prepared for anything if they choose to click on it – even if the paid placement is curiously triggered by almost any irrelevant search query.
There is also the question of mild deception in the ad visuals. Both the ad copy and the fake YouTube interface for these trailers boasts visitor views well into seven figures, but this number is not generated by a YouTube counter; it's just an arbitrary number displayed in a static graphic as part of the joke. Ditto for the "comments" from non-existent YouTube members. We know that content views increase exponentially with popularity; as an ad platform, shouldn't YouTube be concerned about any devaluation of this powerful display metric, however playfully it's intended?
I think the bottom line is: Does the method of deception + irreverant humor = the sensibilities of the target moviegoer?
The X factor would seem to be the content alluded to in the sponsored ad copy. If the content deceives with the promise of seeing footage of a scantily-clad female, then advertising best practices may not qualify to be in the debate; it's the campaign's effectiveness that becomes the central issue. You determine if you're reaching a group of people who are very likely to pay for the product. If so then they will more than likely enjoy the intrusion into their YouTube experience and you'll get the exposure (viral and traditional) you're looking for. If not, you have to chalk it up as a big fail – you've just generated negative vibe about the product, and have helped to burn people out on an interactive ad idea that can be quite effective when deftly executed.
