The next wave in web advertising, only it doesn't seem to work

Unicast is extremely proud to introduce the long-awaited **Video Commercial**—the new online ad format that delivers full screen, television-quality video for advertisers.
The 2 MB, 30-second spots exhibit **broadcast**—not broadband—quality video larger than any other format and allows advertisers to build interactivity into their sophicsticated offline assets.
Delivered via our patented, fully pre-cached method, the Video Commercial is the only formst that plays perfectly for every consumer, every time up to 8 times faster than broadband video.

“Unicast [1]”

If there are typos in the above quote, it's my fault, since the text is being rendered by Flash [2], which of course means you can't cut-n-paste.

Okay, who let the marketers out? And why does anyone listen to them? Every consumer? Every time?

Now I'm curious. I read further into the site:

30-seconds of pure video and expanded interactivity shown perfectly to every consumer every time.
Use full-screen, broadcast quality video to bring your advertising messages online. The [2 MB] Video Commercial plays without any ‘freezing’ or ‘buffering’ and up to 8 times faster than most broadband video units to ensure your campaigns play as well on the Internet as they do on Television.

“Unicast Formats [3]”

Somebody better call John Ashcroft—these people are obviously smoking something illegal. Eight times faster than broadband, and at broadcast quality? Okay, this I have to see. I selected the “View Examples” link:

## Warning
Your browser does not accept cookies. You must enable cookies to continue with this demo.

“Video Commericial [4]”

Okay, so there goes their claim of “every consumer, every time.” Didn't work for me. So it's not “every time.” And I could have sworn I had cookies enabled. Yup. I do. Okay, I enabled cookies based upon privacy settings of “medium,” so I crank the setting down to the lowest setting possible and reload the page.

## Warning
Your browser does not accept cookies. You must enable cookies to continue with this demo.

“Video Commericial [5]”

Okay … damn the security, full cookies ahead!

## Warning
Your browser does not accept cookies. You must enable cookies to continue with this demo.

“Video Commericial [6]”

Well heck!

If they can't get this to work under Windows XP and Mozilla [7], then there is no way they can claim “every consumer, every time.” No XXXXXXX way. I tried all the formats, all the demos, and not one worked for me. Not one!

I hope no one paid these jokers any money.

Then again, I'm not using IE (Internet Explorer) …

Like I said, who let the marketers out? And who's responsible for listening to them?

[1] http://www.unicast.com/

[2] http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/

[3] http://www.unicast.com/formats/

[4] http://www.unicast.com/formats/video/demo.asp

[5] http://www.unicast.com/formats/video/demo.asp

[6] http://www.unicast.com/formats/video/demo.asp

[7] http://www.mozilla.org/

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