We’ve talked about this before, but it’s important to start documenting examples of what we’re talking about. As a refresher, the basic premise is:

Software is an untapped and exponentially powerful medium in which to convey messages and values for brand advertisers. Once advertisers realize how effective it is they will spend more resources creating and offering software that reaches their target audience.

Don’t think of this coming generation of Advertiser-funded software as adware, or even software with deep product placement. Brand advertisers are primarily concerned with message and values. And they will get behind software investments that can convey their values to their target audience while being associated with their brand. In many cases, the most secure and confident of the advertisers will have the gentlest brand association (think NPR sponsorship messages).

The exciting things is that this is already happening today. We already documented Burger King’s foray into funding videogame development which illustrates our premise beautifully. And while videogames are definitely software, they also have many of the characteristics (and costs) of content development. Further on the software spectrum is communications and productivity software. And while it’s still early, and the rough edges show, there are already examples of this happening on the web. Here are two:

• Change Everything – VanCity is Canada’s largest Credit Union. Their business is about helping people realize their goals. They’ve essentially (and admittedly) been inspired by 43 Things. And the site is quite nice. A community is evolving on the site, and the VanCity folks have put their branding in the back seat. A small tagline at the top says “A community-powered site by VanCity”. The VanCity folks understand that all that’s necessary is an association with the goodwill generated by the site’s existence. In fact, the VanCity folks understand quite a bit – namely that the best way to get continued interest in their site (while accruing value to their brand) is to rely on the community to truly power the site with their content and stories.
• My Dream – My Dream starts out in roughly the same territory as Change Everything. The design is much more polished certainly, but even there on the home page the folks who made the site show their distrust of the community. The dreams that you can pick from are all pre-configured. I assumed the cool area map on the front page was dynamically rendered based on the number of people who’d signed up for each dream. In fact, it’s static. OK. Not the end of the world. Once you get to the individual dream pages you’ll (likely) be treated to a professionally-produced canned video of some semi-famous person who has achieved the dream in question. It’s not that professional videos are inherently bad. It’s just that to date the folks at Lincoln haven’t updated any of them (and given the likely cost of producing them, I doubt they will ever be updated). The videos are a crutch anyway assuming that the users themselves won’t put up anything interesting. There seems to be such a lack of faith in users putting up interesting content that even on the discussion boards (such as they are) you can only type a few sentences in each post. Anyone trying to post something that takes some space to convey must continute their post across multiple entries. There are a few other nits including the big Lincoln ad (which think oversells the brand association with the site and the super odd Amazon ads down the right-hand column. I can’t imagine the folks at Lincoln are actually trying to monetize the site. Does this count as content? This could have been a really nice site. And given Lincoln’s power of distribution (their corporate website gets a sizable amount of traffic that they could drive to My Dream) it could have been very interesting. But it feels like the folks that made it pulled their swing and didn’t really believe in the power of software and community.

The funny thing is that I would bet good money that both Lincoln and VanCity feel that their endeavors were a success. I bet both feel like the exposure they got was relatively cheap compared to other methods they use. But I also claim that if Lincoln saw VanCity’s engagement numbers – average minutes per session, page views per unique visit, repeat visits per user, etc., they would be deeply jealous of what the VanCity folks had accomplished. And I believe this would still be the case despite the fact that MyDream has gotten way more traffic overall (due to Lincoln’s larger ability/effort to drive distribution).

It’s interesting that in both cases the sites are really about setting goals, and the assumed brand message is that those respective brands are about you achieving your goals. In the case of VanCity I assume it’s that they’re helping you get there. In the case of Lincoln I suspect it’s more a case of what you’ll be driving when you get there.

Perhaps the best way to compare and contrast the sites is this: would you rather see Rocco DiSpirito talk about how he loves to cook or read about this woman who has decided to help a recent immigrant from the Uganda reunite with her children (this story will touch you). I’m glad both of these sites exist because they are a clear demonstration of the coming wave of Advertiser funded software on the web. And even though I think the Lincoln site missed a bunch of opportunities, every attempt at getting this right is another step in the right direction for this new model of software overall.