Pay-for commercials?
by asi
I’ve been looking for a specific TV commercial that was made a couple of years ago and found it on AdForum.com. To my great surprise watching the ad is restricted to (paid!!!) subscribers only. I thought that it might be exclusive to AdForum and did a little search only to find out another couple of paid-for commercial archives. Am i missing something here? Hello….its 2006! Apart from the ludicrous idea of paying for commercials, we now have google video (which, of course is where eventually I got the ad from) and YouTube and MySpace, so what the helll? Why would anyone on earth (or outside) will pay 299$ a year to get access to commercials??? Now that the web has turn from a text-based to video-based medium isn’t that in the best interest of brands to release all past/present/future creative works to the world? Indeed every sane brand today is happy that its commercials circulate on the web, see for example the case of Honda - W&k their creative agency reported more than 3 million (!) downloads of the recent choir commercial. Its time to release all past creatives as well so AdForum and other creative archives should be open and free, and if someone wats to be paid for that he should charge the brands rather than the viewers.
El Doctur !
You are correct about the interest of companys to expose their new commercials on the web, and the more the better.
I assume that you were asked to pay for that commercial because it’s an old one.
It could be that the business plan behind those commercial archives is based on the fact that most of their costumers are professionals (would it be safe to assume that even you weren’t looking for that add just for the sake of your own amusement?) and wouldn’t mind subscribing to the archives on the company’s credit card.