Recently, there was an article that caught my interest in Ad Age “As the Ratings Fall, Networks Take on Ad-Skipping,” regarding the skipping of online adverts (or rather, the lack thereof). The article basically goes on to say that even though TV consumers are used to skipping or at least having the ability to fast-forward adverts, the same shows online don’t offer that privilege.     

As I’ve mentioned on these pages before, I simply don’t understand this behaviour. People’s habits vary on an individualistic basis.  Online ad technology allows adverts to be customised to the user, to the show, to whatever. Just let the user do what they want, allow ads to be skipped. If someone doesn’t like a particular ad, then show a different one. If they don’t like pre-rolls, show a watermark / bug or an overlay / post-roll. Forcing the same thing down every viewers throat just doesn’t seem like it’s cricket.

Also, there seems to be this great angst over how many adverts can be shown online. Rather than guess, let’s show a bunch and see what happens to the viewer interest and engagement. This isn’t that hard folks.

- Jayant Kadambi

Well, the venerable Ad Age recently wrote an article commenting on a study by Jupiter that pre-rolls actually don’t hurt customers. Not to pick on Ad Age, (OK, I will), but what seems prima facie to be a reasonable article that pre-rolls really do work, and customers are not driven away and the sky won’t cave in and bludgeon your website to death because you had the audacity to run a pre-roll which many, including this magazine, some ad networks, Google/Youtube and others have simply railed against seems like a 100% about face to me.

After spending the last year pontificating and letting others pontificate about the horrid pre-roll and in-stream ads interrupting viewers and the like, when all the evidence points against it, (at least in premium content), at best didn’t help the situation, and at worst added to the confusion in the video ad marketplace.

To be positive about it, it’s great to see “research” point to what we have written on these pages as being obvious. Publishers should be able to monetise their video using whatever ad inventory or ad type suites their content. Advertisers should be able to use existing creative assets and run them on publishers and networks that can figure out what will work where, when and how. Maybe we can now all get to work running ads instead of arguing about pre-rolls.

- Jayant Kadambi

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced yesterday the release of “In-Stream Ad Format Guidelines.” YuMe was involved in crafting these, which like any process where you try and get multiple companies to agree, was trying at times. That being said, we are very excited to finally have some parameters out in the marketplace that make buying video advertising easier!

Video is still a moving target and it is still early in the game, but the guidelines announced are at least a step in the right direction and should help encourage consistency across publishers in terms of ad formats and specs supported.

Ad products addressed by the guidelines include:

Linear video ads – ads that are consumed before, in the middle or after the video content. Just like a commercial on TV. Examples include pre-rolls, mid-rolls and post-rolls.

Non-linear video ads – ads that run concurrently with the video content so the user sees the ad while viewing the content. An example of this is the increasingly popular interactive overlay ad. Below is an example of this ad format that we created for one of our advertisers - Kellogg’s.

Companion ads – display ads, rich media, or skins that wrap around the video experience.

Andy Plesser from Beet.TV did a great post on this announcement that I recommend checking out.

Also, as part of these guidelines the IAB launched an Ad Format Compliance Seal and I am happy to say that we at YuMe are already compliant.

- Molly Glover Gallatin

It is interesting being in an industry where you can wander the office talking about Jackass and not get the HR hounds frothing.  Since we at YuMe were bidding on part of the Jackass advertising campaign, it was free game, at least for a while.  And then, on the 19th of December, which strangely enough is a Wednesday, the sequel to Jackass 2 (or perhaps a massive PR campaign for Jackass 3) debuted.  And it debuted online.  Sure, the distribution rules are highly complex, it plays only until the 31st of December 2007 exclusively on http://blockbuster.jackassworld.com/, and then it plays on Joost, can be downloaded from iTunes, available on Amazon, and then in February, the satellite and VoD providers will air the movie.  I guess technically Jackass 2.5 is not a movie, since it’s only an hour, but the interesting thing is that they are streaming pre-roll and post-roll ads during the playback.  Now, I haven’t watched the whole thing to see if there are ads during it, but it does seem that this release of content is truly ad supported to start. 

Content owners continue to overcomplicate the distribution life of content so they can extract what they think is the maximum value from a piece of content.  Actually, my pet theory is that the distribution rules for content are clearly designed to be highly complex and require tons of lawyers as a BD and legal employment preservation act.  But, that being said, this is good stuff, and maybe a worthwhile trend is starting.  On December 10th, Warner simultaneously introduced the popular Robert Ludlum movie franchise’s latest movie blockbuster, The Bourne Ultimatum, simultaneously on Vudu and DVD.    Vudu is a service/set-top that allows people to watch high-quality, presumably theatrical movie stuff in their homes.

The fact that content owners are beginning to add broadband and online distribution strategies to their precious content monetisation is good.  Hopefully, they will learn to overcome their fear of new distribution models and that the more people that have access to good content, and the earlier they have access to it, the more people will watch.  And the more they watch, the more money they’ll earn.  They just need smart advertising to help monetisation.  Charging a Queen’s (OK, perhaps a Prince’s ransom) on a subscription or pay-per-use basis isn’t going to bring accretive revenue.   They’ll need to advertise.  And let’s stop with the human cry over advertising on theatrical content.    What is it that you watch for 8 minutes before a DVD that you purchased?  Those 3 trailers are adverts.  Wouldn’t it be great to be able to get relevant ads when you watch that 3-year-old Jason Bourne movie, rather than an ad for the next one?

Jayant Kadambi

When advertisers launch campaigns, they tend to target particular demographics. To identify that demographic, they usually refer to the reach numbers of a particular Web site or ad network but also turn to research firms that track and measure such data, such as Comscore. In other words, Web sites – or specific pages within a Web site – are targeted for the campaign. And this passes as an acceptable proxy method to reach a demographic audience.

Well, I think for video, TV’s got it right. In addition to site demographics, TV advertisers use the content or content category as a proxy for the demographic audience. Based on years and years of experience, we pretty much know who watches the Super Bowl (everyone), Dora the Explorer (kids), and American Idol (18-34). Advertisers should insist on being able to target channels, or specific categories of content, on the Web much as they do today on TV.

When an advertiser says he is showing up on Discovery Channel or the Oxygen network or HBO, we have an instinctive understanding of both the content and demographics. We need to add this way of thinking to the online video advertising landscape. In addition to the Web sites or domains on which the ad will run, advertisers also should be asking the ad networks or Web sites to name specific content or content channels on which the pre-roll is running and use this as a proxy for the demographics.

It’s a bit easier with TV and it needs to get that way online. It’s easy to show the client that their ad is running on the third slot at 4 p.m. on Sunday on the Lifetime network. In the online world, it’s a bit more difficult and it shouldn’t be. It just doesn’t seem right to tell an advertiser, “Please click on www.domain.com until you see the ad… it’ll show up, just keep clicking.”

Jayant Kadambi