Fred Wilson has a post today describing the (ridiculous) success of the “Elf Yourself” campaign by OfficeMax.

I was going to paraphrase, but I think he said it best:

Compare the cost of doing one of these flash based interactions versus the cost of a 30 second TV commercial. And then compare the cost of buying enough media to reach 75 million viewers vs putting up a viral website.

When done right, online advertising is the most effective form of advertising there is. However, there are some things to keep in mind:

– One of the reasons I think Elf Yourself and Monk-e-mail worked so well was that they did not hit you over the head with the advertiser/product, they were just good fun sponsored by a company.

– Because of the success of those two, there will be more, not every one of them will succeed.

That said, OfficeMax and Careerbuilder are reaching millions of people for much less than even the production cost of a TV commercial.

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