In the past few days, both TechCrunch and the WSJ have reported about how both YouTube and VideoEgg are trying new ad formats. YouTube is rumoured to have finally capitulated to pressure and run a pre-roll. VideoEgg announced a raft of new formats. Saying I told you so is fairly pompous, bombastic and sophomoric, but I’m in that mood at the moment. Readers of these pages have heard us repeatedly state that the ad formats are not the issue. You need to find the right environment which consists of three things, the content, the user and the ad; and it’s the mix of all three that will determine the success or failure of an ad campaign. And to put a finer point on it, the ad could vary from user to user and from content-to-content. Yes, carried to the extreme, it’ll cause mass confusion and may have scalability problems, but as the market fragments and user’s can choose whatever they want, we’ll all just have to deal with that problem.

A few specific comments on the VideoEgg announcement along the lines of “I told you so” is that we’ve been running their LIVE, RICH and LOCAL ads for over a year now. Wonder when they’ll start running pre-rolls?

- Jayant Kadambi

Another day, another overlay ad format. Overlay ad formats seem to be coming out of the woodwork from names such as Videoegg, Google, Adap.tv, Brightcove and now Pointroll. The latest incarnation – Tickerboy – an AOL and Pointroll joint effort, appears 10 seconds into the video roll and dissolves 15 seconds after inactivity, leaving a branded text link. And it offers full interactivity.

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Fully Interactive!

Phew! The world was presumably suffering from a mere fraction of an interactive ad until now.

But it’s really no one’s fault. There is no IAB or other standard for an interactive overlay or search text link format. So, in the meantime, everyone and their brother are touting a different or unique format. It seems to me, though, that inserting a daily overlay ad format of the week to an already confusing system probably doesn’t help matters.

The bottom line is that all overlay formats have a few basic parameters that still need testing or changing to optimize the user experience and increase the ROI.

With user feedback, the industry can take into consideration several elements of the ad, including: the overlay’s start time and repetition rate, when and how it enters and leaves the screen, the percentage of the video it blocks and its clickability.

But the ad platforms, systems and networks have to allow external control of these parameters if they hope to accelerate the adoption of some standards. That way, advertisers can experiment to see what works and, presumably, make things better.

It seems to me that maybe – just maybe — 10 seconds, followed by 15 seconds may not work for everyone. But that’s just me.

Jayant Kadambi

Could the writer’s strike in Hollywood be misguided and premature? In a Q&A with adage.com this week, former Disney chief Michael Eisner slammed the writers for walking off the job to pursue non-existent revenue. The state of online video is still feeling its way through some growing pains as business models start to shift from teenage hi-jinks on YouTube to professional, network quality broadcasts on a growing number of branded Web sites, including abc.com and NBC’s Hulu venture.

But what really struck a chord with us at YuMe were Eisner’s comments on the pricing structure – or lack of – for that entertainment. To drive down the pricing, the audience needs to grow. And to grow the audience, you need a distribution platform. Hmmm…sounds a lot like what we do here at YuMe.

“There are no gatekeepers,” Eisner said. “You don’t have to be on iTunes, you don’t have to be on Comcast. You don’t have to be on ABC. You don’t have to get approval of anybody. And eventually, advertisers are going to see the benefit of content that’s produced in a superior way, with better emotional hinges, and those people will have a good business.”

That makes sense to us. And as the builders of that platform, we’re ready to help advertisers and content publishers to take online distribution to that next level.

Jayant Kadambi