With all the glamour in Vegas, it isn't at all unusual to notice the moving, large-scale, billboards mounted on trucks. The larger-than-life posters of typically semi-nude women, or images of party-goers having fun at clubs like Tao and Pure. I'll admit, I no-longer pay much attention to such ads no matter how large or in-your-face they are; but, what recently got my attention was simply another great use of video.

Sometime last month along the Vegas strip I noticed a newer model Ford F-350 hauling another one of those billboards. But as I passed the truck I noticed it was actually a huge, double-sided, widescreen hdtv. It played videos of all things related to Vegas as well as what seemed to be videos of smaller mom and pop shops that were located in the city. Curious, I decided to call the number that showed up on a video of a Greek restaurant situated off the strip. I wanted to find out if the owner felt he was getting good exposure by the video. To make a long story short, he couldn't quantify the amount of business his moving video-billboard brought to his establishment, but he did say that he never got a good return from just print ads alone. Ever since he began his video marketing campaign, he has seen more sales and generally more good days than "slow days".

I thought about it and realized that this experience is exactly what's happening online. At least for myself, I no longer pay too much attention to regular online print ads or online banner ads with fixed images. But, when a video presents itself to me on a homepage, more-often-than-not I would take a quick peek to see what it's all about. In my day job, I run a small printing business and can say that even a mediocre business video will typically be more effective at expressing the quality of a business' products/services than a professionally-Photoshopped brochure. Also, unlike the moving video billboard, the great thing about online video marketing is that it is significantly cheaper. At the end of our short conversation, the Greek restaurant owner said his moving billboard was quite expensive, but the increase in business he felt his videos have brought in is more-than-enough to want him to shift more of his future marketing budget towards producing more videos (and possibly take a shot at online video marketing) in lieu of print ads.

(Article image by Bill Longshaw.)