KEY POINTS:
In cubilces across the country," the New York Times reported this month, "lunchtime has become the new prime time, as workers click aside their spreadsheets to watch videos on YouTube, news highlights on CNN.com or other web offerings."
This growing lunchtime hunger for digital in-office distractions has been
leapt upon, the New York Times said, by US internet content providers keen to cash in on the advertising opportunities served up by this growing audience of square-eyed cubicle-dwellers.
Research has found lunchtime ads are up to 30 per cent more effective at influencing purchasing decisions. This statistic, combined with the waning viewership of TV and the rise of broadband internet access in the office, helps explain why companies such as Yahoo! are pushing out material aimed specifically at catching the midday surfer.
Yahoo's webcast wrap of popular web content, called The 9, is pumped out each morning, US time, to catch the lunch surf crowd. It is a slick production which has secured sponsorship from high-calibre advertiser Pepsi.
Even in the broadband backblock that is New Zealand, online video is beginning to have an impact, both as a form of entertainment and as a medium for advertising.
TVNZ launched its OnDemand video service last year and TV3 also boosted its website traffic by beefing up the calibre of its content, including on-demand video clips.
At the other end of the content spectrum, amateur video sharing phenomenon YouTube launched a local version of its site last year with a decent amount of fanfare.
The youtube.co.nz version of the site is a bit of a "so what" option for most visitors. But its business benefit for the Google-owned YouTube is that it provides an outlet for local advertising.
This week it has been sporting ads from government agency StudyLink, giving students a hurry-up to apply for this year's loans and allowances.
Writing about the growth of internet video in the latest e-newsletter from the internet Bureau, an Auckland-based online advertising agency, sales manager Deborah Davenport says as broadband availability grows, consumers are increasingly using the internet as an "entertainment hub".
"Over half of broadband consumers in the States forward on links of their favourite videos and research shows that the majority of it is coming from professional content producers," she says.
"So for them the continuing challenge this year is to focus on more professionally produced material that attracts the advertiser."
As well as offering up compelling internet content to attract eyeballs, online advertisers need to ensure the ads themselves are of a quality that encourages viewers not to switch off.
Marc Ellis and his mates at Auckland start-up Mintshot have taken that challenge to the extreme, creating a website devoted to getting users to view online ads (in return for earning redeemable "Mintshot dollars").
The site keeps users engaged between ad viewings with interactive games where they wager their Mintshot money in the hope of boosting their balances.
While observers remain cynical about the benefits of this marketing model, Mintshot has a decent base of supporting advertisers willing to try the concept. Two months after a high-profile launch - remember November's staged "eruption" on Rangitoto? - the site has signed up more than 60,000 viewers.
"It was a pretty easy job getting some venture capital on board to back it. We do believe this is certainly the way advertising is going," says Ellis.
"If you look at the stats out of TiVo and MySpace it's harder and harder to get the right people watching your ads, full stop, because 85 per cent of people who have the ability to fast-forward content will fast-forward through your ad."
He predicts "invasive" advertising, such as the TV commercials that slice up programming, will disappear in five to 10 years.
"[Mintshot] is the first of its type where you choose, at your own discretion, to be there. And the reason you choose to be there - and we make no bones about it - is you're incentivised to be there by way of being paid for your time."
The internet's emergence as a video advertising medium is having an impact on the wider ad production industry.
Brent Chambers, managing director of Flux Animation Studio - an Auckland production company working across TV programme making, commercials and online productions - says the business's growth is in across-the-board campaigns such as the interactive games, TV, online and retail outlet material it is doing for a Norwegian client.
"We do as many commercials for online as we do for television," says Chambers.
