Here’s a definite entry in the category of “Things I sure wouldn’t want to have to do in today’s economy.” Imagine having to go to your boss, your board of directors, your business partners or that person staring at you in the bathroom mirror and explain why you spent $3 million to run a TV commercial. Once. For all of 30 seconds. (Oh, and FYI, the cost to actually make the commercial was extra.) That’s the average price a number of companies are paying NBC for a TV commercial on this year’s Super Bowl.

Let’s consider the implications of this factoid. One: people are crazy. Two: companies can have huge egos, too. And three: there must be something to this moving picture thing.

The first two are self-evident and need no extrapolation. The third idea is the one that seems self-evident, but apparently isn’t considering how many companies who could benefit by some form of video-based marketing don’t do it. Traditionally the excuse has been cost as related to benefit: “TV commercials are too expensive to make and run and they’re not targeted enough or appropriate for my customers.”  No argument there, but the mistake is in seeing video-based marketing as synonymous with TV advertising. There’s this new thing called the Internet and boy could it do gangbusters for your marketing effort if you put some of them fancy moving pictures on it.

The fact is, thanks to the Internet, you don’t need $3 million to reach three million (or 30 million) people. And the ones you do reach are likely to be more interested in what you say. Producing video for the Internet and perhaps even getting it to “go viral” has changed the meaning of “broadcast” advertising.

This isn’t another fashionable harangue against TV advertising. I’ve spent a couple of decades making TV spots and I believe that they’re still the right thing to do for many companies in many circumstances. But TV commercials have never been about the box they come out of. They’re about the benefits of telling a story visually with moving images. That’s something that will never die. It has evolved, though. The good news is that that Internet has made it more small “D” democratic. The most prohibitive cost in TV advertising has always been the media buy—even when it’s not $3 million for 30 seconds. Maybe you can afford to make a spot, but if you can’t afford to run it, what’s the point?

Going online with video for your product or service either significantly reduces or eliminates that cost, depending upon how exactly you implement it. The trade-off for all of that inexpensive broadcast reach is that you’ve got to make people WANT to see what you’ve posted. TiVo and potty breaks notwithstanding, TV audiences are somewhat captive. You stay seated during commercial breaks because (if you’re like me) you’re too lazy to get up and because you don’t want to risk missing Jack Bauer head-butting his way out of terrorist captivity in the next minute of “24”. Your online video, on the other hand, is easier to skip. I’ll leave it to my colleagues to sing the praises of in-stream vs. in-banner video (or not) and to talk about how SEO and social networking tools can help your video catch on and get seen. My point here is more general, and applies to any video you produce for any kind of use on the Internet. It’s only as good as it is, well, GOOD. Task one is to make something worth seeing. That means you need an idea. (“I want to show my product in a video,” is not an idea.) After the good idea, you need to keep in mind the specific demands of watching something on a computer as opposed to a widescreen HDTV. The budget news is good here, too. Elaborate (read “expensive”) computer-generated special effects are, generally speaking, a waste online, where the best special effects are the amazing things you see generated organically in the real world and where you can dispense with the special effects altogether if you show people what they’re looking for.

There are other rules, some obvious, some less so. Visually simple compositions are easier to decipher on the small format of a computer screen than elaborate ones—which means that dominant foreground action and simple, uncomplicated backgrounds are essential. (The question of what else makes a computer video different from a TV video warrants a whole post of its own. Let me know if you’re interested.) The bottom line is that online video is a great and cost-effective marketing tool and that it can be simple, yet effective.

But simple doesn’t mean unprofessional. Salon.com recently ran a piece noting that 2008 was the year when the most popular viral videos stopped being poorly lighted and shot amateurish productions and started being well constructed, well produced video. The bar has been raised. And, as in every case, the professionalism of what you put out there will say a lot about the quality of your product or service and about how you do business. That doesn’t mean you need to spend big bucks on video production for your website. But it does mean a modest investment in professional help coming up with an idea people will flock to and in producing video that reflects well on your company. If that makes you nervous consider what Tim McAtee, senior analyst with MarketingSherpa, says about the cost of not going online with video….

“Like wearing a suit to an interview, it’s simply becoming a normal part of doing business. If you’re not engaging in this new form of self-published media, it’s entirely possible that you’ll miss out on your next sale because you haven’t put out as much information about yourself in an easily accessible, online format as your competitor has. Your potential customer is searching for someone to trust in a dangerous world, and you are an unknown entity.”

If you’re not online with video, start working on it. And then think about the $3 million you’re not spending and smile.