Video advertising in printed magazines is here, but you might struggle to see it
Comment by the Carat Press Team
The October issue of Marie Claire saw the launch of a video ad in a magazine which is a UK media first. Unfortunately this appeared in just 10,000 copies due to the inordinately high production costs, so unless you subscribe or live in London there is little chance of experiencing this, for now.
This is new for us here in the UK but it has been done before and is actually fairly common in the US, with videos in magazines having been done in Russia & Spain too. Nonetheless this launch certainly has the talkability factor for us press buyers and is a fantastic showpiece for advertisers with great creative and of course great budgets. The tables have been turned to some extent with a digital platform using a print format and it is certainly refreshing to take online and put it offline rather than the other way round.
It is essentially a bound in insert with a screen inserted and reminds us a little of a singing birthday card but with a visual – and like the singing birthday the first experience of this will make a big impression, however, how long will the excitement last? Having said that we think that there is lots of potential to use this environment to inform readers on how do to stuff like makeup, DIY and actually lots of stuff, with the print ad telling you about it, the video demonstrating it and a voucher on page to go and buy it it’s offering consumers a one stop shop.
The technology is by an American company called Americhip and the very first advertiser to embrace this technology was Pepsi back in 2009. Amazingly we have discovered that this technology can run for around an hour and also has a rechargeable battery.
The Marie Claire ad was for D&G who wanted to make a big splash around their 30th anniversary and its certainly impression but with the kind of cost involved in producing this format, we don’t expect to see these too regularly for the foreseeable future.