Video Ad In your Magazine

Technology is a fast moving and growing industry and marketers are now starting to utilizes the potential of some of these mediums of technology to there advantage. One that I will be talking about is video's in print.

In a marketing stunt to promote its fall TV series, CBS Corp. has inserted thousands of tiny screens in copies of the Time Warner Inc. publication Entertainment Weekly for the month of September 2009.

The screens measure two and a quarter inches diagonally and play about 40 minutes of clips from new and old CBS shows.

The video begins with a cheeky intro to the "video-in-print" technology, starring characters from the show "The Big Bang Theory."

After that, the reader/viewer can push a spot on the cardboard insert that holds the screen and watch a clip of the sitcom "Two and a Half Men." Push another to see a preview of the new crime-investigation spinoff "NCIS: Los Angeles." Another delivers an ad for PepsiCo Inc., which is helping fund the promotion.

The player, developed and made by Americhip Inc. of Los Angeles, is much like the chips that play music in some greeting cards and magazine ads and is rechargeable.

The audio quality is good, but beware: There are no volume controls, and in a quiet environment, it’s prettyloud. This is surely a intentional design feature, aimed at getting the attention of people nearby.

Upon getting to the ad, there is a 5-second delay before anything happens — there is enough on the page to probably hold the unassuming reader’s attention for that long, if nothing else the eerie stare from Neil Patrick Harris — and then a 5-second still promo before the promo for the player’s developer, Americhip.

As impressive as this step is, the true marriage of print and digital multimedia still seems quite far off, and eons away from the streaming updates in the newspapers of Minority Report fame.


Side Note - My last name is used in this video.

Reference: Wall Street Journal, Wired