Tech Talk: AdCritic.com

AN STYLE="font-size: 75%; color:#990000; font-weight:bold">Tuesday, Apr. 17, 2001 The Internet ad model as it stands doesn't work. That much we know -- if you need further evidence, go to your favorite financial portal (are there any left?) and check out the share prices of Doubleclick, 24-7, and Asia's own version, Asiacontent.com. Their market worth simply didn't slump during last year's tech wreck like their fellow Net highfliers -- they were absolutely pasted.

Chris Justice's Asiacontent has even had go through the ignominy of a reverse stock split just to save its much-coveted listing on NASDAQ, which gives companies a month to have their share price languishing under $1. I don't know why the company bothered. No one's buying the stock, and if Asiacontent.com did in fact disappear, few would notice it missing.

Everyone seems to hate ads online. But without them, there won't be much online in the future, on the content sites in particular. Just take a look at the pink- slip carnage being dealt around NYTimes.com, CNN.com and Thestreet.com. No ads, no jobs!

So how does that explain the popularity of AdCritic.com? This is one of the Net's hottest sites, confounding the notion that we do in fact hate ads. The site gets 100,000 viewers a day, and best of all, they hang around for at least 10 minutes choosing to actually watch advertisements.

It's a pretty simply idea: AdCritic's Virginia-based founder Peter Beckham posts television and radio ads, mostly North American ones, on the site using Apple's QuickTime player. He sorts, ranks, and catalogues them; you log on, sit back, and chuckle at the creations of some of the most creative minds in the world. Remember, scores of Hollywood directors started in advertising.

AdCritic is pretty much why many of us in Asia, particularly our youth, greet each other with "Wazzzuuuppp!" If you've wondered where that came from, click into AdCritic's big store of Budweiser beer ads. Budweiser's collection of "Real American Hero" radio ads is also inspiring.

I've been an AdCritic junkie for about a year, first noticing it when someone sent me a link to Molson Beer's "Canadian Rant," still one of the website's most popular links. It was also from AdCritic that you probably received that amusing ad from John West with the salmon-hunting bear. Sometimes, though, AdCritic is shocking: log on to the PETA "Bad Cats" campaign, and you can be sure you won't see that on Asian television.

AdCritic delivers ads and does so online, but this is strictly speaking not "Internet advertising" as Doubleclick might regard it. At the end of the day, AdCritic's delivering television and radio content, so it's really old media being delivered on a computer, obviously better seen if your box is cable or DSL- enabled. Try loading AdCritic content on the 33k modems that plague Asia and you'll be waiting a week.

So how does the site make money? More easily than Asiacontent.com, that's for sure. It's actually proved so popular among a media-savvy subset that advertisers often pay to have Beckham post their output. And copyright isn't a problem for those that don't. What advertiser would complain at attracting extra eyeballs -- authorized or otherwise?

AdCritic is a genius of an idea -- part TV station, part regulator and part creative director. It's great for companies wanting to avoid the enormous costs of engaging consultants to come up with a catchy campaign. Spend half-a-day trawling through AdCritic and you'll soon be inspired. And addicted!