The Wall Street Journal’s Brian Steinberg has this interesting piece today about the dangers in embedding video advertisements in web videos, specifcially the “pre-roll” video ads that appear before the video selection. These commercials could turn off viewers who expect the Internet to be different from traditional TV — worse, the pre-rolls can’t be fast-forwarded as is the case with TV programs recorded with PVRs.
To pre-roll or not to pre-roll? It is a rising debate on Madison Avenue and in the Internet community. As video Web advertising starts to take off, pre-roll spots are an increasing source of ad dollars for Web sites that accept them. But by running the spots, sites run the risk of losing viewers to pre-roll-free rivals
The solution, of course, is to just put the video ads somewhere else, either in the middle of the streamed video or at the end. Time Warner’s solution is to make the pre-rolls really short, 15 seconds or less, which is less likely to irritate viewers.
What’s most fascinating about this piece is the implicit recognition that a video advertising market has finally evolved on the Internet, with companies debating such things as the effectiveness of “pre-rolls.”
Cynthia Brumfield at 1:14 PM|Comments(0)
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