In a more fractured media environment, advertisers feel they must make their point at first contact with a consumer. But Eyeblaster thinks there is no reason the journey can't be more enjoyable.

It's Christmas time, and as you're watching TV, a commercial comes on showing an animated, computer-generated family of polar bears doing cute things in highly anthropomorphic ways. The most human of their behavior is drinking Coca-Cola. These ads have run for years. In some way, they have become a signifier of the Christmas holiday season. One year, when Coca-Cola didn't run the ads, people complained that it wasn't really Christmas without the polar bears playing and smiling over a bottle of Coke.

Another example is the man who was recently doing some cooking in his kitchen. Somehow, for reasons not explained, a fire broke out and the man's clothing caught on fire. When frantically considering what to do, he remembered a public service announcement that had run regularly when he was a child: "Stop... drop... and roll!" When I was a kid, it was Dick Van Dyke who starred in these commercials. I remember the procedure well.

There are many examples in which an automated emotional or behavioral response is triggered by images and events. This is what branding does. It is time spent, over and over again, with images and messages, which eventually elicit a response akin to instinct. It is what Nietzsche called "thinking with the blood." Branding takes time and repetition.

This was the point Eyeblaster's spokesman, Ran Cohen, made during his presentation at an iMedia Agency Summit Spotlight session.

But in the "instant culture" of the 21st century, it's harder to get people to spend more time, repeatedly, with the messages advertisers are proffering. People can get entertainment whenever, wherever they want, and it is hard to always be there.

Cohen quoted a study by McKinsey that predicts that by 2010, television advertising will be one-third as effective as it was in 1990. He thinks it is irresponsible to be spending so much money on television if these are the kinds of results an advertiser can expect.

In a more fractured media environment, advertisers frequently find themselves feeling as if they are forced to make their point right then and there, on the spot, at first contact with a consumer. This happens especially online, where a person can suddenly and very easily exchange one environment for another. But far less than even 1 percent of audiences are taking that opportunity to respond at first touch in the online space.

What is an advertiser to do with that 99 percent-plus of the audience?

Eyeblaster's solution is to give that audience something to do and make an advertiser's message a worthwhile opportunity for entertainment and engagement; to get that audience to spend time with the brand's message. 

As an example, an ad for Nivea Body Lotion for Men was shown in which users could interact with the video advertisement itself: A man in his bathroom, towel wrapped around his waist, is looking into a mirror -- at the user -- and he is musing over his choices for post-shower body lotion. The user can interact with the choices on the "shelf," tossing him different lotions that result in different outcomes. Of course, only Nivea leads to the outcome our hero wants. It is really very effective. And the time it takes to play out all of the scenarios takes at least two minutes.

The idea is to get audiences to spend quality time with a brand and its message, even if the members of that audience don't click. The key isn't to drive response right then and there; it is to influence behavior offline by getting audiences to have a positive experience with the brand online. Most products and services are accepted only after a long journey from their introduction. Why not make that journey fun or useful, without demanding purchase?

Eyeblaster's latest value proposition is that it offers the kinds of ad units that will fill that journey with fun or useful engagements, and it can measure this so-called "dwell time." That is, the positive interaction with an advertisement. 

Right now, Eyeblaster is seeing an average of one minute dwell time. One unit Cohen demonstrated, an ad for Hewlett-Packard in 2008, saw two minutes of interaction time.

While advertising is meant to further the goals of a business, there is no reason why it can't make the journey more enjoyable, and Eyeblaster looks like it might have found a way to do just that.

Jim Meskauskas is vice president and director of online media for ICON International Inc., an Omnicom company.