With this type of solution, you can grant access to 30 minutes or 1 hour worth of all types of video streams. When that time expires you watch another ad, not when you switch to another video. By giving control to viewer to start, interact with and complete the ad at there own pace, you ensure the advertiser (who pays to keep content free) that their ad is engaged by the viewer.

Other ad formats compete for attention over and around video or simply appear without consent to the point of distraction and frustration. We believe making an explicit exchange:

- Respects viewers who we hope are savvy enough to understand the value exchange to keep content free.
- Gives advertisers guaranteed engagement especially when they build interactive ads and don’t simply put up a :30.
- Gives content owners a flexible format that separates ads from video in a honest, opt-in format.

Paul Grusche Ultramercial

1) if there is a “skip this ad” button I click it immediately

2) if there is no “skip this ad” button I just decide not to watch the video I was originally interested it. I close the page.

when a company nails search within and displays ads on the fly matching the contents, it’s game over. that is the future and theres a lot of companies working on it.

I think you are right but still does not make it the most efficient way on the web.

As #5 (Greg) said, ads will become more long-form, and consequently they will get closer and closer to what the terrestial networks are dishing out today.

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

The host on the panel, Anton Denissov, Analyst, Yankee Group, mentioned that there are 4 ways to monetize video now.

1. Advertising (which I call the necessary evil)
2. Sell-Through - This is Qoof’s focus
3. Subscriptions
4. On Demand/Rentals

I believe the industry is too focused on #1 and there is not enough innovation on the others. In addition I believe that in the next 12 - 24 months we will see the list of 4 grow to a list of 12. The innovators that come up with new ways to monetize video will have the greatest chance of success. It is time to start thinking outside the “advertising TV Box”.

Come on guys! Let’s get innovative!

http://www.meetingflex.com

The other models you have looked at are all interruption advertising of one sort or another, and inevitably users will develop strategies to block or ingnore them. I would expect to see a much, much higher clickthrough rate for Asterpix’ model.

I actually ignore pre-rolls all the time. This isn’t the TV watching experience we’re talking about here– I just hit mute and tab away (Firefox), then come back about a minute later when I remember (if I remember), then move the progress bar back to the beginning of the movie. I suspect a lot of people do that.

Well, I used to hit mute. Since I’m on Vista now I just kill the audio from FireFox until I’m ready. Takes about half a second since i keep the mixer open. Keeps my media player humming along happily without some guy blaring on about something I don’t care about.

@ 26:

Hey, I’m not tryin’ to super-hate or anything. I’m not even saying it has to be 100% automated, just (tangentially) relevant.

I mean, hell, Google could set up some Mechanical Turk tasks: watch a video broken up into random lengths, and have the Workers apply tags to whatever content is present in those 5, 7 seconds. Might cost them a few cents that they’d make back in less than a day by people viewing the video. Every advertising-supported video that hits YouTube would have enough data within hours for them to target with relative accuracy.

I’m not in the advertising business or anything — to me, it looks like a problem that could solved by existing technologies, rather than having to rely on complicated overlays (like, wtf is up with that player embedded in the post?!), or annoying pre-roll / post-rolls that doesn’t even guarantee a view for the annoyance factor.

Sorry if I sound mildly deranged: I just don’t think it’ll work in the long run for digital content when alternatives are a click (literally) away for end users.

If you’ve ever found yourself going to YouTube because it takes too long to find a video (or for the video to start) on another site, you’ll know what I mean.

The difficulty of gathering contextually relevant data from a Video is greater than you think. It has to be garnered in some sort of automated manner to produce a relevant ad. This is not easy when you are talking about Short Form User Generated Content and requires human intervention (tagging) to assure editorial integrity. Long form professional content is a bit easier but is not as much of a issue since people are used to commercials during their 30 min program.

There are many start-ups trying to tackle this problem: DigitalSmiths, ScanScout, AdaptTV to name a few. But its neither foolproof or easy and with failure rates about 20% branded advertisers will not risk their ad appearing over content that could be damaging.

The solution is far from here so in the meantime people are looking for a viable solution for the obvious loss of ad dollars in the video.

Why can’t we just get back to the basics? Why not just take the AdWords concept to another level? I mean, it seems to be working OK for text content.

Stick a 30 pixel high “bar” at the bottom of the video (longer is better) and display simple, contextual text ads. Is the user watching a Star Trek clip? Tell them that there are Star Trek DVDs on sale somewhere for mighty cheap. Did the video just change to a scene with a popular actor? Change the ad to something relevant — if he’s got a new movie that’s about to hit theaters, link me to the site. That’s advertising, but it’s *useful* advertising.

I don’t understand people wanting to foist 1990 methodologies into 2007’s digital age — it’s like freaking *time-travel*, as if they completely skipped the information revolution. Who didn’t notice the arrival of contextually useful information in advertising on the Internet?

It’s like, I’m watching the Sci Fi channel and a commercial for Tampons comes on. Yes, Tampons. During the commercial break of Stargate: Atlantis. Really? REALLY? There’s so many other things they could’ve showed me instead, but they picked Tampons. That is the very manifestation of advertisers just not paying attention to what they’re doing at the moment.

I in no way shape or form am going to click on irrelevant *information* in the same way that watching a Sci Fi flick is going to make me want to bounce to the store for a Maxx Paxx of Period Stopping Power, because its *irrelevant* and *stupid.*

Advertising should at least be tangentially related to whatever the user’s doing or watching.

Hell, TechCrunch is a good example of that — look at the sidebar. Ton of ads, but they’re all relevant to the readership.

Wow, rant off.

The other company is out of the Netherlands and has similar technology - I forget their name but saw them at AdTech. Both of these companies are not trying to define the format but instead offer a way for both the advertiser and the site to control how the message is delivered in very creative ways.

The future of Video ads is not in the format but in the delivery of the message with each site/channel allowed to determine what works best for their viewers and advertisers. With integration into the video and real time dynamic ads as the bingo the concept of Rolls will fade into the past as interactivity is developed inside the video itself and the message becomes the medium.

I wrote an article on my blog about the video pause ads I talked about earlier if anyone want to discuss.

http://www.3vitv.com