Have you ever happened to be strolling around your local buzzar (market) where you find people making small congregation near the local television store, checking out the shows and advertisements running on the TVs, just to give themselves a break from their wives’ shopping?
Such is the kind of feeling I had when I was browsing through this pretty little site, buzzar.tv. At first glance, all you shall find is a collection of advertisements of brands that you get bored of watching, every time they happen to interrupt your regular shows on TV. What impressed me about the site is that they have maintained very good video quality and have put up advertisements of a hell lot of brands, considering the fact that it’s been recently set up. The sections that one might find on the site are Mobile Phones, Fashion Accessories, Financial Services, Kitchen Appliances, Household Products and the likes.
The very first question that crossed my mind while checking out the videos is that why should one set up a website like this when one can view advertisements of almost all kinds of goods and accessories right on YouTube? Moreover, if the companies actually wish to ride on viral marketing, why wouldn’t they rather upload their videos on YouTube, free of cost, and then try to get pageviews out there. YouTube also allows their users to create channels where brands could create a sweet database of all the advertisements they had ever created for a particular commodity. In a way, that would also help increase the curiosity level of the consumer and also keep the brand in loop. Personally, I would always love to collect all the witty and over-the-top billboards Amul has ever created for its butter.
Anyway, coming back to buzzar.tv, I felt although it might be able to attract viewers for the first few times, it shall not be able to generate loyalty. However, I was proved wrong here. I could almost feel myself getting addicted to the site. Despite working on a wireless dial-up connecion, I found myself checking out more and more videos instead of preparing this post 
. I figured, if buzzar.tv is capable of increasing the number of advertisements being hosted on their site on a decent rate, it just might find a lot many followers.
What struck very neat to me is that buzzar.tv guys have also created wiki pages for each and every brand of theirs, although I suspect they linked the wikis to the brands just while I was watching the videos ‘coz those links didn’t happen to exist for quite a couple of videos I had watched at the start. I guess it’s just because it’s a freshly minted site that every single wiki page was frighteningly empty, at the time I checked. One needs to get himself registered to be able to edit those pages.
Why I think buzzar.tv might be able to sustain time:
- Yes, it’s true. Such review sites (I think I can call it so) exist in scores on the world wide web. But what creates the difference is those videos that help the consumers connect themselves with the brands. Moreover, we all talk about the need of companies creating their own blogs to be able to reach their consumers first hand. I am sure buzzar.tv has managed to create a platform that will enable the companies to monitor their brand image very closely.
- After you finish watching the videos, a nifty little pane comes up that asks the viewer to come up with queries that shall hopefully be forwarded to the companies email. Although they have allowed only 50 characters in there, I feel it’s a pretty easy way of contacting the concerned officials, provided buzzar.tv does what it promises.
- At least to the best of my knowledge, there isn’t a single website that holds such good a promise for brands to directly interact with their consumers and also shape the consumers’ outlook towards their commodities.4. Lastly, one of the major reasons Buzzar.tv should be a hit is because of this huge review on WATBlog
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Downsides about the site:
- Although black is sexy, it is still considered an inauspicious color in the Indian society. Call me stupid, but I feel the background color just might not go well with the Indian audience. Of course, if they too plan to save a few watts of energy, like Google, then I must commend their efforts .
- Personally, I feel more literature was required in the right pane of the videos. It would help showcase a brand a lot if more, than what’s already been written, was provided.
- It would have been great if it was possible to compare the specs of 2 or more similar products – say, a few brands of cars or multiple brands of laptops.
- The fast forward button doesn’t seem to be working. Neither do they have controls to reduce the volume of the videos.
- They really need to diversify and include a lot many products if they wish to stay in the market. And I suppose, it’s gonna cost them umpteen bytes of server space.
So, what is your opinion about Buzzar.tv? Do you really think it’s innovation in the right way or am I just building castles in the air?
i forgotten a sites name which had a huge library of video advertisement and was charging high prices to let people watch those videos(as i say content is king) why wud sum1 go there one might ask……but then there are many people whos bread and butter is earned from advertising……hope they do the same thing here….buzzar either u get buzzed regularly or u just get buzzed off
@ Raghav
I know there are a lot many people who earn their bread on advertising. But, what still alludes me is why should one even pay a penny to watch the commercials that he can watch for free on YouTube? Moreover, even if we consider a situation where it’s only that XYZ site of yours that contains the videos, why would still pay to watch them?
And…why would you really want buzzar.tv too to charge consumers to check out the content in their site? Moreover, considering the fact they have put up wiki pages, I doubt if they shall ever monetize the content access. To the best of my understanding, the only place where they shall try earning money from is by charging the companies whose brands they showcase on the website.
i give u an example-if u want a list of venture funds available in india and their addresses …..u search google but still may not get all the required things so u got to a site for eg say ventureworld and pay them 1000rs. to get the complete list……..now isnt that 1000 rs. worth your time and moreover content which u might have left…..now coming to ad world….a person making ad in london may want to check some advertisements from other countries so that he can get an idea or can steal that idea….thats why dont underestimate any market or business cos every business has potential much bigger than u or me can gauge….and as far as brand marketing goes a slideshare like site wud do better than video as people wud be clicking 4 every pages…..for eg….a company advertisement lets say hutch on tv, shows that go to for eg slideshare and type 333 to get complete detail of 199/month plan wont a user be able to get more information on slides better than videos……..so that every pages depicts deeper details of that plan…….wat u say abt that idea
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@ Raghav
Coming to your analogy regarding the admaker in London, you never mentioned why would the concerned indian company allow its commercial to run on such a site? Although I am not too sure about the legal procedures but I suspect it’s kind of illegal (technically) to upload commercials on Youtube as well. The fact that companies don’t object is because it gives them free publicity. Once they start realizing that these freely distributed videos are husting their brands too, I am sure they shall stand up and act.
that site is like a content archiver and as far as litigations go companies cant win the cases unless they can prove that the other ad is the copy of their copyright which could be tinkered with by changing some scenes….what i ,meant was it was a beautiful concept of archiving advertisements that i came across….which tells one thing clear if u got content u r gonna rule the market….(it might include your precious articles)…..:-))
We at WATBlog are honored that you consider our articles precious (a li’l boost up of the ego ain’t too bad, is it?)
Now, it’s perfectly legal for sites like Google News to search for content and poviding you with links to those articles as and when you ask for them. However, if buzzar.tv tries something similar, they should idealy link to pages that contain the ads. Moreover, when you talk about tinkering with original content, keeping the idea same, are their actual sites that do this kind of stuff? I mean, it’s a hell kind of effort, isn’t it?
its painful to come everytime to comment so add me to ur messenger my id is raghav1211@gmail.com ………..as far as content snitching goes every1 does it …….doesnt every blog takes news from main sites like tc and gigaom modifies it and present it to its audience(except few like harshil )….and nothing wrong in that if our indian directors can copy whole stories from hollywood sites and moreover indian sites like bigflix copying netflix concept.. ….. btw why we wasting our time on buzzar are they gonna pay us…….
@ Raghav – I often aggregate as well
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HeHe…I can definitely see Harshil smiling broader than the smiley.
@ Raghav
We aren’t “wasting” our time on buzzar, it’s the idea of content generation and aggregation that we are trying to analyze. Moreover, tell me something. If one newspaper happens to report a piece of news one day later than the rest, should that mean that the particular newspaper has plagiarized the piece? Same goes with other blogs and techcrunch & gigaom. Moreover, If you happen to follow WATBlog but not GigaOm, would you not be happy if we posted a news too?
Try pondering on this idea.
in news business exclusivity counts if sum1 reports a day after and broadcast it as a exclusive then isnt he doing wrong…..if sum1 provides old news thenn they shud provide credit to the news breaker…..news copying is not a crime but then techcrunch have a large following because they breaks the news 1st….be a leader not the follower
@ Raghav
Why do I feel that you are getting exasperated with me?
Anyway, as far as I am concerned, I am just trying to debate an idea with you, and not “argue” with you. Hope you understand that.
Coming back to our topic, yes, exclusivity definitely counts. But if you aren’t exclusive, it doesn’t bring legal issues into the picture. Plagiarism does.
Now, we need to decide on what is plagiarism and what isn’t. You say, if someone else breaks a news then the credit must be given to the news breaker. Let us take up a scenario when blogger first provided the openid support. Suppose, I too am a blogger user but since I don’t use it too frequently, I happen to figure out the new feature a week after the rollout. Now, I happen to blog about it on my blog. Of course, in one week, any news is stale news and a well known site like techcrunch must surely have broken the news already, in the blogosphere. But in this case, am I required to give credits to Techcrunch or even the official Blogger blog? Shall I still be called a plagiarist of idea?
@ Raghav
Oh, by the way, just a little query. Did you ever feel that we at WATBlog might have posted something, calling it exclusive, whereas in reality such hadn’t been the case? Just being curious, that is all.
no bro no such feeling ………as far as debate goes i can talk whole day its just that i m little busy now……ya sometimes i do get annoyed with some news at watblog which is completely useless or which dont have an iota of originality…even i have to compromise when i wanted to write here cos some1 here told me they dont do product reviews and i m very good at that…..give me ur gmail id there we can have endless conversations……..do u know any indian blog who like to showcase startup reviews i wud be happy to write there too…..c
Well raghav its not that we dont do product reviews its just that we dont do product reviews that are a year old. The product review that u had submitted was pretty old and thats why we dint put it up on watblog. As said earlier useless or not useless is a relative term. WATBlog caters to a large audience hence different authors posts etc. We cant be catering to only one mans belief of whats great and whats not. And thats what makes watblog better than others
gud to find that u down to earth cos u an engineer and i m just another guy doing graduation
thanx 4 the suggestion hope i would come up with latest product reviews…..i realised my mistake too…….but as far as far as my saying on rgv blog is concerned i still remain adamant to it…….cos majority of the people visiting watblog are either wannabe entrepreneurs or are well established in tech sector for them such news do not matter at all……..why cant u bundle all the celebrity blog articles and provide it at one go so it dont take valuable pages of watblog
@ Raghav
Your suggestion shall of course be taken into account. But it is also true that there is a wide variety of content gobblers who WATBlog caters to. Yet, if your data about our major readership happens to be true and if you can back it up with some proof, we just might give your advise a go.