NEWS: Rise of the webmercial

MOST of us have come across at least one “webmercial” while surfing the Internet. They are short web-based commercials that start playing automatically on some websites or come attached with an e-mail.

This is the future of marketing, said web design and web commercial company VE Media. Webmercials have been gaining popularity because of their low production cost and the fact that they can be distributed over the Internet without having to purchase expensive TV airtime.

“Webmercials have been all the rage on the Internet since 2002,” VE Media business developer Ho Kin Shwen said. Ho cited the birth of YouTube and the increasing availability of video technology as catalysts for this emerging phenomenon.

“We have done a survey which showed that more than 90% of Malaysian companies are SMEs (small and medium enterprises),” VE Media managing director Henry Ng said.

“These companies don’t have the luxury of employing a large marketing team or a team of programmers (to produce the webmercials), therefore they rely on third parties to do it for them at a lower cost” Ng said.

VE Media believes that SMEs can now get the same exposure as big companies through webmercials at a fraction of the cost.

Many webmercials are created via “green screen” which is where a commercial is created with an animated background. This eliminates the need for big production crews and exotic filming locations.

A possible hindrance to the webmercial market in Malaysia is the problem of acquiring fast and reliable Internet access in many areas.

As a consequence many videos and webmercials cannot be viewed satisfactorily.

“We believe that the Internet speed will improve in the next few years” Ho said. “Give it two or three years, the webmercial will be king.”

Ng pointed out that there are now third-party websites that can host videos on behalf of a company which stream adequately, despite the viewer having a low bandwidth connection.

VE Media started in 1999 and is incorporated in seven countries including Malaysia and Australia. For more information, go to www.vemedia.net.