Like most people, I can generally tell within the first few seconds that I’m watching a car commercial; the camera angles, the music, the deep voice of the announcer. It’s doesn’t matter what brand or model; they all look the same.

Here’s a perfect example:

Just plain boring.

Unless I’m a car enthusiast (which I’m not ), I would never email/blog/tweet/facebook that ad. It doesn’t work because it’s not talking enough about me, the consumer, it talks more about itself; the car. 

The television commercial is dead. TiVo killed it in 1999, but YouTube brought it back to life in 2005. 

Just this year Old Spice won an Emmy for a campaign that ran almost exclusively on YouTube.

I like commercials that don’t feel like commercials.

Why does this work so well? 

The answer is engagement. This isn’t the 1960s. Consumers aren’t passive anymore, they’re active. They need to be stimulated; they need to be fed something exciting and emotionally engaging, and what kills me is that we know they’re good at it. 

How do we know they’re good at it? 

Superbowl commercials. 

Superbowl commercials are highly successful because they have an engaged audience with millions of eyeballs. We’ve been programed every year to know that we are going to watch highly creative and awesomely funny ads that people will talk about for weeks. 

YouTube is the Superbowl for commercials; and it has a built in audience/community hungry for good content that is actively consuming. There is something special about being able to comment on a video, but there is something more special about being able to share it; I can’t do that with TV. At least not yet.

So where are we headed? What does the future of hold? How are business going to reach consumers?

I’m making a bold prediction here but, I think Google has the special sauce. 

Brands are just getting good at making video content exclusively for the web. The future will be with Google using YouTube as a platform for brands serving “Advertainment” (I dislike that term but I’ll live with it for now) on and around content on their newly announced TV software solution. 

Google TV.

It makes sense. YouTube is technically the third largest social network on the planet and by far the most popular destination for online video consumption. Brands will focus on where all the eyeballs are. And if Google TV is as successful a product as the Google Android Mobile OS, then the way we watch content and advertising has changed forever.

- Lee

(disclosure: Logitech is a client of AttentionUSA)