The benefits of crowdsourcing are often broken into two categories: value and choice. When we created our curated crowdsourcing model, we decided that quality had to be part of that equation as well. In order for crowdsourced video to really become a reliable option for brands and causes, quality must improve beyond the typical contest-model of crowdsourcing.

Yet the most important benefit of having all three—choice, value, and quality—is often overlooked by brands and causes. It’s the ability to dramatically extend your reach and engagement with specific demographics through video content.

Until now, there has been no practical way for most brands to affordably create quality customized content for targeted demographics. Using a contest to make this happen is too cumbersome. Sure, you can ask the crowd to create a video for one target group, but there is no guarantee that entrants would select demographics evenly, likely resulting in lopsided results. That just isn’t a reliable way for a brand to establish a marketing campaign.

Aside from that, brands had few options prior to curated crowdsourcing. They could spend massive amounts of money on multiple executions (wasteful spending!), or implement a low cost gimmick to get around it, like tagging on new voiceover (think in the style of low budget legal ads) that can be customized to a targeted area, ethnic group, or branches.

A mainstream example would be Microsoft, who recently launched an ad campaign without any voice talent (see one of the ads below). The benefit is that Microsoft can now insert any language of their choosing based upon where the ads will run. But why is that even necessary? The ads come across like they are missing something, and they are… the human element. Since when did you have an entire interaction with a family member, or two, in silence? And doesn’t Microsoft want you to think the product is amazing and powerful? If it were, wouldn’t you utter something? Anything? So having zero dialog comes across empty, as if they forgot to edit the final spot.

This is where GeniusRocket comes in. Our model can guarantee choice and value, while still maintaining the same quality of the agency. We’ve found that GeniusRocket ads are typically about a fifth the cost of similar quality ads produced by large, traditional agencies. This means that—for the same budget as one ad at a large agency—a brand or agency could produce four additional spots targeting specific demographic categories.

To us, it’s clear: customized ads, and GeniusRocket, is the smarter way to go. Pushing out a one size-fits-all ad across TV and Web and hoping that it will speak to each demographic is a risk no brand should have to take.