Technologies Can Put To Use Now - United Internet Technologies introduces multimedia software product - Statistical Data Included

Brandweek, April 16, 2001 by Angela Taylor

Using a CD-ROM to access a website-- a "hybrid CD"--is nothing new. In fact, the ability to update websites and gather data make them a preferred marketing tool for many companies. In most cases, CDs are used merely as the direct marketing vehicle that piques interest and then delivers the customer into the hands of the website where the real business is done.

We all know, however, that websites are not without their problems. Varying plug-ins and media players and slow connection speeds severely limit the content that savvy marketers can--or should--include on a website. Thus, the advantage of the CD-ROM: delivering the elements and the player all in one little round package. But stand-alone CDs lack the ability to keep your information current and they don't capture data on your customers.

An innovation from United Internet Technologies (UIT) has introduced a solution that allows you to maximize the advantages of both CD-ROMs and the Internet. UIT's Divo (digitally-integrated video overlay) software seamlessly blends video from a CD-ROM into a website, providing fully-integrated, full- screen, real-time video on the Internet without a high-speed connection.

Imagine that your website is a stage with a backdrop and a set. When the Divo CD-ROM is inserted into a user's drive, the curtain goes up. Performers appear on the stage--whatever real-time video you want to play on your website, be it a human host, a car, or an animated mascot--and are able to completely interact with the set and backdrop-even when the set and backdrop change from page to page within a site.

There is no need to constrain your video to a square space on the page. Using green-screen photography, you can allow your host to walk around the site, interacting with other elements, pointing out features, pitching your services and products.

The Divo CD-ROM installs proprietary software onto the user's computer drive that allows Divo to take its cues from the website, enabling you to control the content a viewer sees according to the day of the week or time of day--or even the month. The information on the CD is not updated from the website; everything is there on the CD when it is delivered into the user's hands. The coding from the website simply instructs the CD what to play and when.

[NBC used Divo to promote its Fall season in 2000. For more on this, see Volume Three of Marketing with Video, DVD and CD-ROM]

Until now, Divo was available as a turnkey solution only; UIT handled the creation of the disc and the website from soup to nuts. However, after months of development, Divo is now available as a licensable product, a software solution that Web designers can use in-house to create sites and CD-ROMs that work together seamlessly. The three-CD package handles everything--encryption, time-release coding, green-screen composition, HTML--needed to create a Divo website in a very user-friendly interface. "It's all point and click," says VP of Sales James Harding. "It's mind-blowingly simple."

Update Your CD-ROM From Your Website

A similar solution, called Dynamic CD, has been developed by A.D.2, Inc. Like Divo, Dynamic CD is a CD-ROM that gathers information from a website. The difference is that, with a Dynamic CD, users are never taken to that site.

The problem with putting your marketing presentation on a website, according to Brad Mooberry, president of A.D.2, is that the World Wide Web is like a big shopping mall with lots of things to do. "We want to put the client's brand in front of the consumer without them going online, where they can check their e-mail, comparison shop the competitors, and get distracted and drawn away from that site."

Consequently, the Dynamic CD technology keeps the presentation on the CD, which can be updated from a website, thereby maintaining control of the customer. The customer stays focused on your company without the distractions of the Web. "This way, you can find your customer without your customer finding you," Mooberry explains. Rather than sending them to the mall, you're sending a salesman to their house.

The Dynamic CD installs software that tells the CD what to show at what time. Your website is coded with that information and communicates it to the software. As with Divo, the CD is not actually being updated; all of the files are there, but the software will-- depending on code read from your website-- display different files throughout the life of the disc, giving the impression of an update.

Dynamic CDs can employ text, sound, Flash animation and video.

Depending on the needs of the client, the update process can be automatic and virtually invisible, or controlled by the end user with a mouse click If the client chooses an automatic update, the Dynamic CD will connect to the Internet when the disc is launched and can even show an opening animation sequence to mask the connect and download time. Downloading the update information takes no more time than loading a Web page; obviously faster with T1, cable or DSL connections, but even with a 56K dial-up connection, the update time is negligible--about 40 seconds.