Top 10 Crowdsourced Ads

Crowdsourced applications are increasingly common in the evolving Web 2.0 market. Whether it’s content contributions at Wikipedia or map “fixes” at TomTom, consumers are actively contributing to product design, build, QA and support. MyStarbucksIdea is an oft-quoted example. It generated hundreds of ideas on everything from new drinks, to promotions, to clubs.

But, what about plain old advertising? What are good examples of Web 2.0 crowdsourced ads where fans contribute less to the product’s implementation and more to the product’s promotion. While it’s tempting to give the nod to classified sites like Ebay and Craigslist where consumers pitch their own wares, these ads are not conversational (as in “conversational marketing”)… there’s no give and take. So, what are crowdsourced ads and what can they do?

Top 10 Crowdsourced Ads
1. The YouTube widget – YouTube pioneered the use of the video widget as advertisement. The beauty: while all content on the site is user-generated, much of the value in its dissemination accrues to YouTube. Each rich media widget shows the YouTube brand and links traffic back to the service. The result, self-reinforcing growth to #3 overall traffic rank and Google’s $1.65 billion acquisition.

2. The Dylan’s Greatest Hits email – Columbia Records campaign promoted the release of Dylan’s Greatest Hits. Users provided cue-card content for famous opening segment of D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary “Don’t Look Back”. 81,000 viral videos were emailed during the first 3 weeks of the campaign.

3. The Voices of the Olympic Games blog – Lenovo’s “Voices” provided the architecture for contributor content. Athletes blogged about their experiences. Keyword-rich, first-person accounts more than doubled traffic to the Lenovo website in August 2008 and lasted through October.

4. The Priceless microsite – In homage to their long running Priceless TV campaign, MasterCard developed the Priceless.com microsite. Winner of IAB’s MIXX 2.8 Gold Medal for “Best Brand Destination”, the site solicits users to upload photos of experiences they consider “priceless”. Users then publicize their list, the site and MasterCard.

5. The Twitter Song – Actually my favorite fan-content ad, its production quality and subsequent reach (285,000 YouTube views) demonstrated the power of motivating a single, talented brand-fan.

6. The Wired Cover – Dear Tech Geeks, your fifteen minutes are here. CondeNast’s CondeNet hosted this Xerox promotion whereby users could create their own Wired Magazine cover featuring, of course, themselves. Forward on and please print on a Xerox printer.

7. The Nike ID design – Designing your own shoes may be the ultimate in user control. Yep, choose your colors, labels, materials and more. Mix and match your choices with designer-provided templates. Click, order and ship. Then wear them around and tell all your friends how you designed them yourself at Nike ID.

8. The Soloist contest – DreamWorks and the LA Times jointly asked fans to answer the question “What does LA mean to you?” While the contest was postponed, initial entries captured the essence of the city from across social strata and focused buzz on the film’s LA roots.

9. The Netflix Prize Netflix offered $1 million to any developer who could improve its movie recommendation algorithm by 10%. As competition heats up, it’s been a magnet for media coverage including over 100,000 online mentions and multi-page NY Times and AdAge stories where the contestants articulate their approaches, challenges.

10. The ComcastMustdie campaign – Every list needs a counter-example. What if it wasn’t “fan” but “critic” content, and what if the site wasn’t yours but was put together by hundreds of disgruntled customers. Further, what if it was picked up by the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal. Well, then you’d be Comcast, and you’d really understand the power of user-generated “ads”.

Did I miss criteria? Do you have better examples?