Almost a year ago, I wrote about the Ford ad on the cover of Esquire that was the first ever digital ad in a magazine. Now, CBS has teamed up with Pepsi to create an ad in Entertainment Weekly featuring a small video player. I’m surprised it took this long but the appetite for an expensive new ad form has been suppressed by budget freezes this year. You can read more about it on CMO.com.
The ad form is similar to the greeting cards that sing to you when you open it. No doubt, greeting cards will soon have video capability. Consider the fact that the video cards will probably cost around $3 to $5 and the newsstand price of Entertainment Weekly is $3.00.
I have to wonder who will profit more from the use of the technology? Hallmark gets the same amount of money per consumer but puts in way less effort and raw material to produce their product. Entertainment Weekly will need to charge a steep premium on this ad type which will keep demand down in the short run.
This technology is going to have to trim down in size before we start seeing lots of these ads in a single issue but this will come as well. Now, what I haven’t seen yet is the first direct mail piece incorporating digital video in print. Will it be Microsoft’s next OS launch? What other product company has the cash and ubiquity to support such an expensive campaign?
