I tuned into Rocketboom’s video-cast on Friday because they did a segment on the New York City Live Window event — in which Versu Richelieu (otherwise known as Kess Quinn) is sitting in a store window for 72 hours, building an exact replica of her surroundings in Second Life — and it struck me that this looks very much like the future of advertising (or at least a possible future).
Intel sponsored Versu to sit in the window and also paid however many Linden dollars it cost for her to build what she’s been building, so they get all kinds of publicity out of it, and Linden Labs gets lots of publicity for Second Life too (although they had to take the world down during the event to block an “exploit” of some kind). Even Versu gets some publicity for her SL building skills, and so does virtual PR firm and event host Millions of Us.
Then when I watched the Rocketboom episode, I saw a different kind of ad — host Joanne Colan, who started the segment interviewing Versu as an avatar in the game Second Life, shows up dressed in a Borg costume from Star Trek and does an ad for a battery recycling company. Is this the future for video-cast advertising? It just might be.
It was kind of cheesy, and I don’t know whether it crosses some boundaries to have the host doing ads in the middle of the show, but then we’re not talking about Ted Koppel either, let’s face it — and shows like Texaco Star Theater with Milton Berle in the early days of television weren’t all that different, really. Also interesting: Andrew Baron of Rocketboom, Joanne and the advertiser all show up in the comments on the episode.