Unicast (and the Superstitial®)
By Jeff Roberts
With the development of the web as a medium for information and
entertainment, neither of which are free (though the web does lower
the cost associated with distributing content), ways need to be developed
to pay for the creation and maintenance of web content. On American
TV, this happens through the use of commercials, or advertisements
imbedded within the medium of TV, which companies pay for, thus making
the content free (in the monetary sense) to viewers. Some think the
same idea can be applied to the web.
Hence the creation of the Superstitial®, one of the web's answers
to the TV commercial, developed by the Unicast group. The term, coming
form the Latin meaning "stands above" and tagging on a suffix
to make it sound like "commercial," describes advertisements
which appear as pop-up browser windows when a web user opens a particular
page. These advertisements are Flash™-based audiovisual presentations
which last around 30 seconds. One of the interesting features of the
Superstitial® is that it loads without slowing down the transfer
of other content. Also, many Superstitials®, like all good web
advertisements, have "Click Here" features which bring the
user to other sites.
Commercials on television have come to occupy an interesting place.
In one sense, they are interruptions. They steal time away from the
stream of
"product" (entertainment, information) that is being presented
in order to
market some other product, possibly another show, or else some tangible
product or service. But commercials are clearly much more than that.
Advertisers know that TV viewers do not want to feel that the advertisers
are interrupting their information, entertainment, infotainment, whatever,
and so they try to make their commercials fit within the larger context
of
television in general. In earlier days, TV personalities themselves
would
take time during the show to advertise products; the commercial was
part of the show itself. Now we have the commercial break method,
by which
advertisers pay large amounts so they can use better writers, or Britney
Spears, or talking frogs to advertise a product. Commercials, just
like all
TV content, have to compete for the audience's attention. Thus commercials
are not interruptions from content on TV, but become content themselves.
The Superstitial® is advertised as "The Internet's Commercial."
So it begs
to be asked whether it will occupy a similar place on the web to a
commercial on TV. It's hard to say whether this will be the case because
the web is so inherently different from television. Television is
a
real-time constantly streaming (to use internet language) medium,
where if
you want a particular piece of content it is a given that you will
have to
wait for it. The web, as it has been developed, is very different.
A user
on the web controls what content comes up on the screen and the pace
at
which content comes through by clicking. Since TV watchers will always
have to wait, a TV watcher is more willing to watch commercials. But
since web users generally do not have to wait, how will they react
to these 30-second spots popping up in the middle of their clicking?
In this case, the advertisements really are interruptions, because
there is the inherent
assumption on the web that the user actively selects what material
comes up. Before pop-up ads are to become a true part of the medium,
the assumption has to change so that users can accept content which
they did not actively select.
At www.unicast.com, there is
a gallery of Superstitials®. Though the Flash™ format makes
them both catchy and relatively easy to load (as opposed to banners
and real video), they are for the most part not that interesting.
If they were more interesting, it's more possible that they would
find a place on the web. But given the current nature of the web community,
the Superstitial® is probably not ready to be accepted as the
method of payment for web content. But since no one yet knows what
that method will be, people might as well try whatever's possible
until they get it right.