Have you seen commercials change much since the rise of use in YouTube?

Well, it’s a phenomenal change! I love it as a matter of fact.

The ability for a commercial to be launched, virally, free, and longer than your normal TV spot is leading to a new wave of commercials. Because the normal TV commercial spot usually lasts 30 or 60 seconds, being able to launch a video that engages the viewer many times more than normal gives us much higher quality of content in commercials.

The fact that being able to launch a YouTube video campaign means that, your distribution cost is zero! You could pay millions of dollars for a Superbowl ad spot, but if the majority of the Dorito’s (Keep yo hands of my momma!) success was the circulation of the video after the original release, the virility and cost of your commercial could have just as much success with free distribution.

The video that spawned this post I saw over at Jason Keath’s (@jakrose) Blog, The Puma Hardchorus.

Edit – Also watch the Heineken Case Study Video about the AC-Milan/Real Madrid match. (YouTube)

I recently had the joy of being able to get an invite to ShoTools (still in private beta). While a great tool, I believe it still has quite a ways to go, especially in regards to the depth of it’s abilities.

ShoTools revolves around three main categories: Audience, Sharing, and Statistics.

Audience

General overlook about who your followers are, who you follow back, who doesn’t follow you, and the ability to take actions based on these criteria. There is an option to auto-follow people based on tags that you select, and other criteria. This criteria follows under: Friend/Follow ratio, last update, how many updates, min. number of friends/followers, and follow new people following you.

I like this section the most, you can manually select be able to go in and choose exactly who you want based on what you search by. Depending on the depth of your tags you really can find quality people who benefit you and you benefit them!

Sharing

A little typical here. With the option to drag in a bookmark to share via ShoTools, which later the shared link will be shortened and appear with a toolbar up top with the usual gizmos.

From their Help section of Sharing:

With our Fast Share Button in your navigator you can share with your audience the site you’re in. This link will be shown using our Expert Toolbar with your brand visible on it so you will be recognised as a reference in your sector. We offer also a tool to specify rss sources to make it easier to automate, schedule and share posts from different sources with your audience.

Statistics

I believe this section is still currently under development, and I can’t give a good judgement.

Overall outlook, I’ll have to give it some time. Let it develop a bit more, but for now…Four Stars.

Register for an invite, then drop a line here, let me know what you think!