A new social video ad was uploaded on 25th March by Mini. It is about a couple of guys sitting in a car on the German Autobahn and watching two Minis do some crazy moves. At some point the moves become suspiciously unreal and the guys start commenting that they obviously got drawn into a viral video ad. The end consists of typical TV ad titles and the Mini logo.

This video absolutely hits a nerve. The stats that we have collected over the last 3 days are just amazing:

It hit 30,000 views within 3 days and continues to grow. By today it has taken 9 honours on YouTube.

What is it’s secret? Maybe it’s the honesty of the ad. It starts out like a dark viral, but at the minute that it is obviously not real any more, the comments make it funny and the effects are quite cool. There is no shame in confirming it as an ad in the end.

One of the biggest fears in our industry is that online video will replace TV, and the consequences this will have on advertising and broad audience reach. According to recent research reports, the notion that online video is pushing TV out of the market is at least partially mistaken – instead, both, TV and online video viewership are continuing to increase.

With time-shifted TV increasing over-proportionally, and therefore people increasingly skipping ad breaks, new and more effective forms of advertising on TV are increasingly necessary – such as sponsorships, overlay ads, or clickable product placements. However, the traditional ad breaks will not fully go away – they just need to be used more effectively.

The important finding in the reports is that 31 percent of Internet activity occurs when consumers are also watching TV. Almost every third person uses the Internet while watching TV! Surely, this is an opportunity that advertisers must not miss!

The Superbowl ads show the way: this year, almost 70% of the ads had a URL embedded and planned for interaction with their customers after running the ad. The role of TV ads is changing: they are now a start to online user engagement. Advertisers have to be aware that consumers have their universal look-up tool at hand as they are watching TV and are keen to type in a URL and follow it to explore new products, play an online game, or interact in some other way with the brand that is advertising on TV.

Even now, TV ads are still a very good means to reach a large and diverse audience and seed consumer interaction. The minimum of user interaction that a TV spot should provide is that a copy of itself can be found online and shared with others through a link. Having your TV spot uploaded online is a great means to seed a viral ad to an audience that is used to sharing through their social networks.

You just need to check out view counts on some of the top Superbowl ads of this season to see that their online impact can be enormous:

• “Free Doritos” has more than 2M views
• “Careerbuilder.com” also has more then 2M views
• “Pepsi Refresh Anthem” has more than 1.6M views
• “Cars.com Lifetime of Confidence” also has more than 1.6M views

A good Australian example is this Toohey’s ad, which was uploaded by a random user and achieved more than 500K views. Toohey’s would have gotten a lot of information about their audience and possibilities to re-connect to that audience had they published it themselves.

So, the next time you roll out a TV ad, also roll it out online and don’t wait until one of your customers does this job for you out of sheer frustration that it is not otherwise available.

Set up a channel on YouTube, through which you publish it. That gives your ads a common home and an authorised place to live. It also allows you to check out YouTube Insight metrics to analyse the composition of your audience.

Since YouTube is regarded by most as the default online video search engine, it should be your first call to upload it there. Another site to consider is MySpace.TV – if you have a MySpace page for your brand or campaign, you should also have your video ad at MySpace.TV. There are plenty of other sites that may be relevant depending on the audience you are targeting.

When you upload the video, also make sure to fill in the metadata with lots of information – this is your means of performing Search Engine Optimisation within YouTube and makes your video turn up in the “related videos” box of other videos more often.

Also consider making your TV ads more interesting for an online audience. Some recommendations for making interesting video ads for online were recently published by Daniel Flamberg at iMedia: make them short, funny, and use animation. And don’t forget to include a URL in your TV ad so you can direct your customers to the right place of engagement.

Some Video ad collectors on YouTube:

• http://www.youtube.com/user/tvadfad
• http://www.youtube.com/theinspirationroom
• http://www.youtube.com/user/ideenverteiler
• http://www.youtube.com/user/timyang
• http://www.youtube.com/australianads
• http://www.youtube.com/tvadsfromaus

We have such an online video celebrity right here in Australia: Natalie Tran and her communitychannel on YouTube which has more than 150,000 subscribers. Her videos have amassed more than 64MM views according to WAToday- that’s even more than AC/DC who have 53MM views. Her highest scoring video has more than 11MM views!

Here’s your challenge: I am expecting to see at least one viral video campaign come out of Australia with her as the star. Do it right, and you’re bound to have a tremendous viral success.