50's Flash Back

Though many of todays browsers did not grow up in the 50's era of black and white television some may still have seen some classic reruns of old black and white television, or listened to some classic radio shows, like The Shadow or the Lone Ranger. Driving up to college once (a six hour trek) I listened to an entire seasons worth of Sherlock Holmes radio plays, a thoroughly enjoyable experience. While listening it always struck me funny when ever they would have one of their strikingly obvious announcer advertisements, for things like Bently's hand cream. It is a means of advertising long abandoned because of its extreme obvious and silly nature...or so I thought.

Then, just the other day, I had decided to entertain myself by watching one of two episodes of the internet television success, Ask A Ninja, when I saw the strangest thing. At the end of one of the more recent installments there it was, the Ask A Ninja guy obviously promoting Take TV. (A new device for watching internet content on your television). I was kinda stunned, to think that the internet would fall back to a form of advertising mostly abandoned by all other mediums struck me as amusing.

It made me realize just how lost advertisers are. They have no idea what works for the web (because for some reason forced video ads and obnoxious pop-unders don't seem to work...wonder why?) and thus they have resorted to trying everything. But, in their defense, it worked. The ad was seemed vastly more endearing coming from the popular net sensation than it would ever have if it was a mid video interruption. I get the feeling that we are likely to see more "dead" methods coming back to grace the interweb with their presence.