Is ShortTail Media Short-Sighted?

Is ShortTail Media Short-Sighted?

The Marketing Consigliere has let an article from AdWeek ping around his head a little while before he passed judgement on it.

In “A New (Full Page) Look for Online Ads,” AdWeek reported on Atlanta-based ShortTail Media’s “new” offering called Digital 30 or  D30.  D30 is “an elegant new video advertising platform that provides advertisers an easy way to use their existing video assets across some of the nation’s premier websites.”

Utilizing Visible Measures as a third party video analytics platform, ShortTail Media -they say that they are “not” an ad network – hopes to attract publishers with a “new” concept for video ads – a separate page of purposely placed 15- and 30-second videos, like interstitials, between search and content pages.

Is ShortTail Media Short-Sighted?

AdWeek reported that back in February, the Interactive Advertising Bureau‘s annual meeting, Ecosystem 2.0 Annual Conference, ShortTail Media’s CEO David Payne delivered a speech advocating less sensitivity to user experience and the embracing of “bigger, bolder creative “.

Gran’ disgraziato!

The Marketing Consigliere already scolded a speaker at this event for allegedly spouting a ridiculous rant against marketing analytics and now this flabbergasting spew of reactionary old media mentality.

Be less sensitive to user experience??

There is a book out there (that has been around for 10 years already) that certain CEOs should read – The Cluetrain Manifesto.  In it certain CEOs may find some words of wisdom pertaining to concepts like “Markets are Conversations.”   Have an interesting video invitation to a dialogue and you can perhaps have a happy customer.  But ignore the “laws” of user experience at your own risk – and the Marketing Consigliere is willing to wager that if you think with an old media “push” mentality, you will lose.

There is hope that this effort can work if the video is not intrusive.  But if it is obstructive to the user experience, ShortTail will be a short timer.  Perhaps on large consumer branding campaigns it will be successful.  But many people don’t like having to jump through more hoops to get to their content.

Agree or disagree?

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