Online Advertising

It’s been a wild week to be in the eye of the storm. My new company, ViTrue, is smack in the middle of what’s starting to legitimately feel like a revolution in advertising. Video is a medium I’ve always been interested in because when placed online, it has gigantic advantages over traditional ads for engaging the consumer. I’ve always asserted that TV advertising’s primary pull is its ability to evoke an emotion in the viewer. Banner ads, newspaper ads, and Google text ads can’t do that. But video absolutely can, just as it does on television. Everyone’s found a lump in their throat while watching a television commerical at one time or another. For me it was the Cindi Lauper/Kodak “True Colors” ads during the ’96 Olympics.

So ViTrue’s starting with online video, and leveraging the web to make it flow both ways between the consumer and the product. This week we finalized a deal with Turner/TBS to power their user-generated-video site, “Am I Funny or Not?” We’re also providing the technology for Friendster’s “Get Political” video contest that allows people to upload their own political ads. Check out one I uploaded on Arnold’s behalf: sharkle.friendster.com

And if that weren’t exciting enough, the grey lady got around to picking up my career move: www.nytimes.com/swansonarticle

August 23rd will mark my 5th Anniversary with Tribal Fusion– and I’ve decided to make August 25th my last day. When I joined the company 5 years ago we were 5 people trying to eek out an existence in a horrible online ad economy. September 11th was soon to follow and if there were any advertising budgets left, few of them were online.

Still, we kept costs low and took advantage of the down market to slowly claw our way to profitability. It provided me an amazing opportunity to work closely with our CEO and founder, Dilip DaSilva and play a key role in the generation of a company. It was a fantastic experience to make huge contributions and experience successes and failures that were all my own. Before long I found myself as a Vice President at one of the web’s top media companies. I was invited to speak on panels, and I built a fantastic 10 person team to whom I’ll be sad to say goodbye. I’ve been on top of the world in many regards and yet I was itching to begin something new.

On September 5th, I’ll begin work as VP of Network & Partner Development for ViTrue a small start-up based out of Atlanta focused around user-generated video advertising. I’ll work from home and I’ll be starting from scratch. I’m certainly out of my comfort zone on this– but I’m hoping to grow through a new set of unfamiliar challenges. So, here goes…