21 March 2011

Winners of Ads Worth Spreading run on TED.com (free) this week. Let us know what you think

There’s a fun new feature on TED.com this week. All the video ads that follow our talks have been specially chosen by a panel of judges as “Ads Worth Spreading.” They were selected from more than 1,000 entries as being especially powerful, funny, beautiful or engaging.

We invite you to view them here and join in the conversation about them. (Each winner has a page of its own where this conversation can take place.) TED is charging nothing to show these ads. Instead, we’re simply trying to nurture ads on TED.com that are appreciated by you, our audience. You may have noticed that TED never puts ads in front of its videos. This is a deliberate choice. We don’t believe in shoving ads down people’s throats. We would like the ads on our site to be viewed because you want to view them.

Some people have an instinctive dislike of corporations and hate all marketing messages of any kind. But if you care about a better future, then corporations have to be part of that conversation. One way or another, they have a giant impact on the world. At our conferences, we engage with some of the world’s biggest corporations in a constructive way. We’d like ongoing engagement on our website too — and we’d like you to be part of it.

Because they run after the talks, we can let these ads run longer than a standard 30-second TV spot. That allows them to adopt a different tone. Less marketing spin, more authentic story-telling. We’re excited at the possibility of the emergence of a new, longer form of communication that is more human and more compelling.

But what matters is what you think. So please, check out this collection of ads and tell us what you make of them.

Ideas are free. But distributing them costs money. We count on our partners for that. It will mean a lot to us — and to them — if you will take the time to view the films they’ve created on our site, and give constructive feedback, both this week when the ads are running for free, and in future when they’re helping fund the spread of ideas.

Many thanks,
Chris Anderson
TED Curator