And I couldn’t be happier. The boundaries between editorial church and advertising state have essentially been honored when it comes to news, and most people have been blissfully ignorant when it comes to product placement, integration and other marketing driven content.

Advertainment, aka branded entertainment, has been touted as a very big opportunity for online video. Personally, I want my entertainment to come from entertainment and content people, not a marketing department brainstorming session. Sitcom about the Geico Caveman? Shoot me.

But there may be a light (no, a Bud Light) at the end of this tunnel. According to a recent report in AdAge, Bud.TV continues to hemorrhage users. Bud isn’t integrated directly into most of their content, instead acting as their own presenting sponsor. Putting content behind an age-verification wall isn’t helping, especially since most of the content is essentially appropriate for all ages. Some of it is even pretty entertaining. We can only assume they had hoped to become another player in the content syndication game. But you can’t aggregate an audience of 18 year olds when you don’t let them view the content.

Regardless of the business strategy, I’m glad to see that the novelty of such ventures is wearing off. Now that people are starting to see what good content is all about, and how easily they can find it, maybe they’ll start to be less tolerant of advertisers meddling in the plotlines of their entertainment. Maybe pre-roll isn’t such a bad option after all.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007 at 11:09 am and is filed under Real Ads, Streaming, Viral, WebTV, advertising, rants, video syndication. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.