Electronic Advertising with MediaWrangler MediaWrangler is the ideal tool for developing interactive multimedia catalogs and brochures to advertise your company's products or services. Once you have created a multimedia document with MediaWrangler, you can take advantage of the many services offered by AltaVista to help you enter the exciting new age of electronic advertising. What is Electronic Advertising? You have no doubt heard about the "Information Highway", a world-wide computer network otherwise known as the Internet. The "net", as it is commonly called, makes it possible for people all across the world to access information for the price of a phone call. This new form of electronic communication is opening up exciting new possibilities for advertising and information exchange. The WWW (World Wide Web) is a graphical extension of the Internet, replacing boring typed commands with a point-and-click system which incorporates images, audio, text, and video. The WWW is composed of thousands of individual sites known as "web servers". Once connected to the Internet, you can use a "web browser" program (try the NetCruiser (tm) software which is included free on this CD!) to log onto a web server and experience the multimedia content available there. This is known as "net surfing" or "browsing the web" in net jargon. Sounds great, but... Creating and maintaining a web server is a costly and time-consuming undertaking. Unless you are a computer whiz familiar with HTML code ("HyperText Markup Language, the "language" used to create the pages that you see on a web server), you will need to hire someone to design your web server. You will also have to pay each time you want to change any portion of your web server. The process is further complicated because someone must describe the desired look and feel of the web server to the programmer before it can be implemented. There are also some considerations regarding the viewing of a web site. There are a handful of electronic shopping malls on the net today which let you browse images and text describing the products. Here's the problem: each image (or audio, video, or text) must be transferred to your computer before it can be displayed. This can result in annoying and costly delays, especially for the average home user connecting to the net via a phone line and modem. To make matters worse, once you log off the system the images, audio, etc., are no longer available, forcing you to log back on and go through the click..., wait..., click..., wait... cycle once again. How can MediaWrangler and AltaVista help? The document created by MediaWrangler (a Roundup file) functions exactly like the HTML pages of a web server -- you click on "hot spots" in the document to display images or text, or play audio or video. Now you can create a web-server type document in minutes, without any programming or scripting. Then simply distribute a copy of the royalty-free, MediaWrangler Player along with your Roundup, and potential customers can view your advertisement. Since the entire document, with all of the included media, is now stored on your customer's computer, it can be viewed instantaneously, as often as desired, with no on-line service fees. Okay, now you have a stunning multimedia advertisement, brochure, or catalog. How do you distribute it to your potential customers? That's where AltaVista's Electronic Distribution Services can help. AltaVista Electronic Distribution Services Internet Distribution --------------------------------------------------------------------------- AltaVista has created a web server designed to provide an Internet distribution point for MediaWrangler documents. Internet users can connect to our web site and download a free copy of the MediaWrangler Player for viewing MediaWrangler documents. For a small monthly fee, AltaVista will place your advertisement, brochure, or catalog on the Internet in the AltaVista web site. Visitors to the web site can download your document in one of two ways: 1. A unique name will be assigned to your document. This could be your company name, or a descriptive name for your document. Visitors can type in this name to go directly to your entry in the web site. 2. Visitors can browse the AltaVista web site's contents, selecting different categories to steer them to the type of information they desire. Distributing your MediaWrangler documents in the AltaVista web site offers several advantages over other forms of electronic distribution: Low cost. Now anyone can afford a presence on the Internet. Easy to modify your document - simply send us a new version. Provide world-wide access to your information, quickly. We can have your new document posted in the AltaVista web site in 2-3 days. CD-rom and Floppy Disk Distribution --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If your company currently sends mailings (literature, data sheets, glossy photos, etc.) to potential customers, consider offering the same information on floppy disk or CD-rom. You might be surprised to find that the cost for floppy disk or CD-rom distribution is comparable to old-fashioned direct mail packages. Not to mention the increased chance of your valuable information actually making it to your customer, not ending up in the trash as "junk-mail". Computer user's tend to be "curious", and will undoubtedly plug your floppy in to see what you have to offer. Another great way to distribute your multimedia information is on CD-rom. If you have large amounts of media to present, say a catalog containing several audio and video files, you may want to consider distribution on CD-rom. A CD-rom will allow you to distribute roughly 650 megabytes of information, for about the same cost as distributing a single floppy. Digitize Video --------------------------------------------------------------------------- AltaVista can help you add custom video to your MediaWrangler documents. Simply mail us your VHS or 8mm camcorder tape, and we will digitize it for you and return it in an AVI or MPEG format which you can include in your MediaWrangler Roundup file. Custom Catalog Design --------------------------------------------------------------------------- AltaVista can help with the entire catalog design process. Just give us a call and tell us what you want, and we will provide you with a written quote detailing the cost and time required for AltaVista to design a stunning multimedia catalog or brochure for your company. For more information on how AltaVista can help you master the world of electronic advertising, just give us a call, or check the appropriate box on your registration card. AltaVista Services : Phone (408) 364-8777 Fax (408) 364-8778 or write to : AltaVista Services 1671 Dell Avenue, Suite 209 Campbell, CA 95008