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Belch: Advertising and
Promotion, Sixth Edition
IMC PERSPECTIVE 15-1
V. Developing the
Integrated Marketing
Communications Program
15. The Internet and
Interactive Media
© The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2003
Integrating the Internet—TV Commercials Hit the Web
As the Internet moves beyond being a direct-response
medium, assuming additional marketing objectives
such as branding, the format of the communications
are changing as well. Knowing that banner ads and
interstitials may not be doing the job, electronic marketers
are turning to an old reliable—the TV commercial.
Only now, the TV commercial is on the Web. As the
technology on the Internet improves, more and more
marketers have taken their commercials to the Web
hoping to attract viewers’ attention and interest. Traditional
advertisers and their agencies like the idea,
because they are used to dealing with commercials
and the costs are lower than those for TV. While the
idea of delivering commercials via websites is not
new—now defunct PointCast and Excite@Home have
done it for a few years—the poor quality led many
advertisers to shy away from the medium. But all that
is changing.
Take Apple Computers as an example. With its latest
“Switch” campaign, designed to attract Windows users
to the Macintosh camp, Apple has taken the integration
of TV and the Web to a new level. Eight 30-second
TV spots created by TBWA/Chiat/Day and directed by
Errol Morris (director of the movie The Thin Blue Line)
feature regular people talking about their switch from
Windows to Macintosh—and, of course, about how
happy they are for having done so. The $75 million ad
campaign has been integrated with a new Apple website
(apple.com/switch) by directing viewers to the site
for more information. That’s nothing new. But once at
the site, consumers can actually view the TV commercials
(the IMC program also includes print). The commercials
appear in the same quality as they would on
TV, and they have become a big hit—in one case creat-
ing a new crush named Ellen Feiss, whose homework
was eaten by a PC.
Apple is not the only one integrating TV and the
Internet in this manner. PepsiCo featured a Britney
Spears spot on its site nearly a year before Apple
added its commercials, and Universal Pictures used its
website to promote its movie A Beautiful Mind. A
video ad for the movie Collateral Damage was shown
on the Los Angeles Times website, the city of New York
ran commercials to promote New York City on the New
York Times website, and the New York Stock Exchange
ran digital ads on the website of The Wall Street Journal.
Automobile companies like Toyota and Volvo have
also run spots, as has Porsche in the introduction of its
new SUV, the Cayenne. The CBS MarketWatch site estimated
that as many as 75 percent of the campaigns
run on its site in 2002 would include commercials.
But the real question is, “Will consumers watch the
commercials?” Skeptics argue that consumers are
watching fewer commercials on television and are
probably less likely to watch commercials on their
computers. Amicada, one of the companies offering
the technology to deliver high-quality commercials,
thinks they will watch them—particularly if other traditional
methods are also employed. Amicada suggests
a permission-based program coupled with
incentives (gaining points for watching) and access
to premium content and entertaining video content
such as music videos or movie previews that would
include the ads. Viewers would get credit only when
they viewed the entire commercial, which would be
tracked using Internet technology. Advertisers would
pay only for the commercials watched—$1 for each
CPCV (Amicada’s equivalent of CPM). While some
advertisers are not sold on the CPCV concept (Greg
Smith of Carat Interactive, in New York, considers it
arm twisting), they do seem to like the permissionbased
and pay-for-performance aspects. With a number
of large companies now showing commercials on
TV and the Internet, can others be far behind?
Sources: Mylene Mangalindan, “Now TV Ads Are in Reruns on Web
Sites,” The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 11, 2002, p. B5; Aaron Baar,
“Porsche SUV Entry Teases with Web, Print Effort,” adweek.com,
Apr. 29, 2002, pp. 1–2; Thom Weidlich, “Online Spots—a New Generation,”
Advertising Age, July 30, 2001, p. S10; John Schwartz, “Out-of-
It Eyebrow Lift Gives Apple a Superstar,” New York Times, Aug. 19,
2002, p. 3; Theresa Howard, “PC Users Make the Switch in Mac Ads;
Apple Launches $75M Campaign to Nab Some of Microsoft’s Market,”
USA Today, June 11, 2002, p. B2.
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