Thin Web Line

Recently I've been travelling abroad and haven't been posting. I know - I'm not the biggest star on Turnhere.com, and I've looked at all the other Turnhere Blogs, and they haven't been up to date as well - so I thought that I would start to write on a single topic each week ( and we'll see if I can keep up with it )

This week is Internet Marketing in the Viral Video world.

I've been lucky enough to sit in on some meetings with some great companies who are still trying to figure out how to push marketing in the world of viral video. In one discussion, the client revealed that a study was taken that examines the audience's trust factor in a company's portrayal of a marketing "blog".
There is a very thin line of trust that is crossed when a consumer realizes that the "blog" he/she is reading is infact an advertising method. Let's say that the corperation is selling a fishtank. The fishtank company starts a blog and writes about how good the fishtank is to the consumer. Now let's also say that upon investigation the consumer finds an acutal blog of an employee of the fishtank company. The consumer will believe the real blog, moreso than the corperations "blog". This makes alot of sense, does it not?

Companies all over are trying to figure out how to incorperate blogging and viral video into their marketing.

Mentos and Coke. You might know the video; a roll of Mentos is poured into a bottle of Coke, and the result is a large amount of Coke shooting out of the bottle. This is a prime example of what could have been a marketing experiment. Upon the placement of this video on Youtube.com and other viral sites, the amount of Coke and Mentos slightly increased in sales.
How could a company do this with all of their products?

With the control of Youtube.com, and such other sites, we are now beginning to discover what turns on and off consumers to viral video. How can companies intergrate their product with videos to make us unknowingly want to obtain that product.

THAT is what the companies are trying to figure out =- and you know what... They have no clue how to yet.

Look at the hits on the most recent Youtube features. Ever since the corperation buy-out at 1.65 billion dollars, the site has become more of an advertising tool. In the past a featured video would have over 100 thousand hits, but now we are starting to see postings of featured videos with only hundreds of hits. The audience is understanding that this is starting to become an ad tool, instead of user-friendly media.

Turnhere.com generates a wonderful amount of traffic, and the business model of this site lends itself to become a marketing tool for companies flawlessly. Users watch the advertising shorts the same way they watch the filmmaker shorts. This model is perfect for the user, we know what is a commercial, and we'll still choose to watch it, because it will benifit us.

It is those other sites that are now owned by numerous companies who are deciding what they should feature to the world. Now ad a hint of marketing and advertising, and the consumer starts questioning.

When will they figure it out, and will we ever be able to tell when it happens. That's the scary part.