InfoTech & Public Policy

Avi’s recent post “The New Ads” asserts the death of the 30 second ad and points to viral advertising as the new frontier in pushing products. While his points are well taken, focusing exclusively on the new forms that commercials will take as television moves online misses the larger picture: content, not just advertisements, is sure to evolve.

Between Tivo, Slingbox, piracy, ad-blockers, desensitization and competition from an ever-increasing array of media, it certainly looks like television producers are in for a rough period. Only very recently, with the introduction of itunes, the online broadcast of sports events and ABC’s next-day streaming of popular shows, have they started to take advantage the new distribution channels the internet offers. Even more nascent is the use of the internet to supplement media content.

ABC has been a pioneer in this area, particularly with Lost, its breakout hit, now in its second season. For the uninitiated, Lost follows a couple dozen survivors from the crash of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815, who are trapped on a mysterious island. When the show first launched, ABC created a web site for Oceanic Airlines complete with the ability to look up flights and make reservations to create buzz about the show. More recently, in anticipation of the summer break between seasons, ABC has launched “The Lost Experience,” a game set to run in parallel to the show that includes web sites, commercials airing during the show, billboards, phone calls and other interactive multimedia.  The show has also made a serious effort to have its cast and writers engage the fan-base by taking part in online forums and actively responding to feedback and theories about the show.

In a way, The Lost Experience can be seen as the direct descendent of Majestic, a PC game that EA introduced and then swiftly abandoned about 5 years ago. Majestic was a fully immersive mystery game; not only would you play around on the computer to try to figure things out, but the game would contact you by email, phone, fax and IM and would tailor its content to you specifically. For instance, the game might send you a handwritten, threatening letter that mentions your family by name. While Majestic proved to be staggeringly unpopular, largely a function of being too involved, it and its derivates represent the sort of total immersion that will likely become increasingly common as the internet enables new content, not just new ads.

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