Vancouver’s “Noise Digital” breaking through the clutter

So i'm a pretty big game fan, not so much a gamer. Personally I find the costs to keep up with the world's newest gaming technology (ie. PS3) just a little too rich for my flavor. But I do have to commend Playstation's new game "Little Big World" for their (dare I say) awesome interactive marketing! I wanted to dedicate a blog post to "Digital Noise", Vancouver's own digital ad agency. So what do they have to do with gaming and digital marketing? EVERYTHING!

Having started their business in 1998, they experienced huge growth and now serve a wide variety of clients from Adidas, Playstation, Bell, Unilever... you name it! So the question is, what is digital marketing? What forms do they use? 

It gets better! Quoted directly from their corporate website "all of our efforts are devoted to producing the great, ground-breaking, relevant, holy s#*t! kinds of interactive creative that make our clients famous" - (http://www.noisedigital.com/about.php) what more could you want from an ad agency! So instead of me g

oing on and boasting about this co

mpany here are a few neat "media units" they used for the "Little Big World" campaign:

"world" - http://www.noisedigital.com/archive/sony/lbp/world.html

"zipper" - http://www.noisedigital.com/archive/sony/lbp/zipper.html

Media units are pretty much an animated silk screen ad that can engage a user and keep those eyeballs and brains wondering "what the heck am I looking at?" As fun as they may seem, I wonder if these interactive forms of media are limited to a 3 month window of attention and retain the sustained effects of traditional TV advertisements? Obviously the argument would be that it should be better than TV because users actively choose the information they search thus get bombarded by ad pieces of what they want to see. As such, consumers have long since showed the effect of ignoring TV ads, will consumers one day see through the animated videos and dancing figurines to know that this is just another ad?  

The Success of Youtube Ads?

Youtube Ads?? Why would I want to see ads on Youtube when I get spammed enough on TV!? I personally find it worrisome to think that I'll be spammed with ads telling me to go to Las Vegas when I'm just wanting to look at new uploaded videos made by my friends! To be fair, lets paint a little context to the story...

Since October 9th, 2006, Google's acquisition of Youtube brought one key question to marketer's minds: "Can Google make effective Youtube ads?" 

The promise was to use "pre-roll ads", ads that play for short period before the Youtube video is aired to the active user. As time can tell, Google also experimented with inline ads, ads that appear on the bottom of the video for the initial 15 seconds and remain animated to trigger consumers to click-through (http://newteevee.com/2007/05/11/youtubes-new-inline-ads-screenshots/). 

However this still begs the question, do people really want to see ads when they're on Youtube? The obvious and simple answer is "NO"! This article on CNet News explains it best: "It really is all about a father finding a cleaver way to get himself invited into his teenager's private world" (http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10009462-71.html). 

In a society where internet ads are dreaded and often ignored, Google has been successful in implementing ads in their Google website as content that blurs in the background of search results. However people use the Google search engine to look for specific information not casual browsing like Youtube! No one intends to buy anything when watching a Youtube video, so how will ads that prompt sales on 3rd party sites be even remotely successful? Some blog users believe that making the ads on Youtube animated might help, but still the purchase intent is not there! Ads on Youtube that attempt to drive traffic might reinforce top-of-mind awareness but Google has a long way to go until we can begin calling Youtube ads a success.