Monday, May 2, 2011

The Awesome Reaction Opportunities of Online Advertising

Jeepers, what a news day! Hows about that Obama unscheduled announcement at 3-something this afternoon? That was a ripper.

News started coming through Twitter about 2.30 this afternoon about the unscheduled announcement from Obama and then very quickly the rumour mill went into overdrive in that it was to announce that Osama Bin Laden had been killed and the US had the body.

This kind of news of course spreads like wildfire on the internet. The announcement was to be streamed live on The White House website, which of course was delayed for almost an hour. During which time, everyone was hungry for information, which meant publishers had to turn information around SUPER QUICK.

As @tweetdaniel pointed out, TV3 didn't manage to get it quite right:

I would recommend clicking on the link above so you can check it out in full, but basically, it reads:
"We are currently experiencing extremely high traffic due to the announcement that Barack Obama is dead. Please bear with us we will be back up soon."
Whoops.

Not sure that was right.

Now, if you've read my blog before, you will probably know that I don't have a lot of nice things to say about TVNZ. I still don't, because when I tried to watch a live stream on tvnz.co.nz this afternoon it wanted me to report the error in loading, which I tried to do a number of times. Le sigh.

However, they did manage to do something right today (shock horror I know).

There I was, reading Mashable.com on what was to be announced and what do I see, but a One News banner run through the Google Content Network:

I do not tell a lie, this was up within half an hour of me first reading about the rumour that Obama was going to announce the death of Bin Laden. Now, it's not the prettiest of banners, but it's bang on. All the information you need. Up to date. Relevant.

I think it is awesome and just shows how online is the best medium for this kind of immediate response. Press also gives the opportunity for quick reaction turnaround, but for that, we're talking the next day, not within the hour. This is just too good. Brilliant work.

This doesn't change anything though TVNZ. This is clever, but all is not forgiven...

2 comments:

Izak Flash Man said...

Pah! TVNZ has nothing on the Facebookers and twitterers yesterday with the Albany cyclone.
We got it from two hysterical girls at uni first who saw it. Then peeps on Facebook wigging out. And then Twitter had the pics up not long after.
TVNZ was saying not much more, and only had one or two postage stamp sized photos for a while.

iChild said...

I wouldn't dare comment on the speed at which publishers deliver news compared to the Twitter community. This was more on TVNZ's ability to turn around online creative and have it loaded in such a short period of time.

Definitely talking ADVERTISING not journalistic reporting.