MUMBAI: VideoEgg, Inc., the leader in helping brands connect with people in online environments, is helping fill the vacuum media buyers are experiencing during the writers’ strike.

Providing targeted, engagement-driven online video advertisements, VideoEgg is helping brands to navigate the successful transition to online advertising.

The writers’ strike, which began 5 November, 2007 is yet another stake in the heart of advertisers trying to navigate the changing environment. The internet now rivals television as the primary destination for content consumption.

Sixty per cent of consumers are online one to four hours a day, compared with sixty six per cent of consumers who watch television for the same length of time. Despite this change in consumption habits, advertisers continue to spend 5.7 times as much on TV advertising compared to online, revealing their TV dependency — an outdated and inefficient method of engagement. However, IDC predicts this will change and that internet advertising will grow to $31.4 billion in 2011, increasing its share in the overall advertising spend.

“Right now the industry has created what we call an online ad spending gap, where consumer attention outweighs advertising dollars online. With the current writers strike in full force the time is ripe for organizations to build new marketing muscle, and the winners will be the ones who jump in with two feet. We understand that scaling an online marketing competency is hard and are focused on making it easy for marketers to move TV money online,” said VideoEgg chief marketing officer Troy Young.

A protracted writers’ strike will increase usage of online media, making it even more difficult for brands and their agencies to reach consumers through traditional TV campaigns. Advertising online offers brands the ability to:

* Reach highly engaged consumers

* Get in front of large, targeted and engaged audiences

* Be highly accountable

* Generate higher-value advertising than any other method

“Brand advertisers will have to move more ad budgets into Internet advertising and in particular into video commercials to stay competitive. When budgeting time comes around, US advertisers have to decide where to invest their marketing dollars to get the most ROI. Encouraging advertising clients’ decision to shift budgets onto the Internet is the fact that Internet advertising is more effective than traditional advertising: It can do anything that print-, audio-, or video-based media can do, yet it also allows for better targeting, is more accountable, and offers interactivity with consumers, allowing ads to lead directly to online purchases,” said IDC analyst Karsten Weide.

VideoEgg offers targeting tools specifically for online environments to help advertisers pinpoint the consumers they want to reach. VideoEgg has over 15 million daily impressions skewed towards elusive TV demo and leading brands such as Puma, Hewlett-Packard, NBC, Ford, Sprint, Pepsi, Motorola, Canon, New Balance, and General Motors have looked to VideoEgg to deliver rich-media brand experiences.

“If the strike continues past mid-January, which it will if no progress is made in the next three weeks, marketers will be confronted by a clear challenge. In the face of inevitable broadcast network erosion and an inability to acquire compensating make-up inventory from the networks, will they search for more efficient alternatives?,” said Jack Myers Media Business Report’s Jack Myers.