Your commercial on TV: $50

[cosmicity]

This is pretty fascinating. Want to directly affect the outcome of the next primaries? This new website called saysme.tv just launched, and for about $50 a pop, you can run a political TV commercial in any market. So, for example, if you want Obama to win in Indiana, you could buy an ad and run it on CNN for $50 to help him out. Choose from

Comments

[cosmicity]

I don't know... I think agencies still have a place in there. I mean, if you take a random sampling of You Tube, the mass majority of the content is complete garbage. Most people just can't make a good ad on their own. That's why there will always be agencies. People need the help of others who are naturally creative. Now, will you see the most successful viral video makers launch their own very profitable agencies? Hell yeah you will. And in that capacity, I'm excited about it. I'd love to be producing that kind of content as opposed to only stiff corporate stuff

[cosmicity]

Totally. I mean, the future of the internet probably IS more video and motion, but as you said, the internet is first and foremost about getting information easily and quickly. If you're going to integrate video, it needs to somehow be faster or far more helpful than just reading the content, otherwise people will ignore it. We make that mistake at Chrysler a lot, too. Their new thing is to put up these 10 minute demonstration videos for their new vehicles, but who would sit through a cheesy 10 minute infomercial when they can just read the car's crucial specs in about :30 seconds and look at a 360 photo of it? That's what people really want from a car website. (Which leads me to yet another common web problem: Most people go to company websites looking for those kinds of quick stats about a product, and the information is always completely buried in the site. Dumb.)

-m

[xpatchouli]

I don't understand how this can be so affordable. Are the air times from midnight to 5am? The networks have exercised the right to prohibit ads from airing for past political campaigns. There just going to let anyone air an ad?

[cosmicity]

I'm sure that the networks have a right to bounce the ad you make if they think the content is inappropriate, but yeah, the ads that you see on their page are pre-screened, so they can be run.

Cable network ad time in a single market (one city only, one airing only) is pretty darn cheap... particularly when you're buying the slots available to Comcast (cable companies) to sell directly (they get a certain amount). It is possible these are midnight - 5 (it doesn't say anywhere), but I'm not even certain that'd be necessary. They made a deal with these companies for these stations - I bet the price could even be for normal times.

-m