Much To Do About Video

Keeping on top of the latest technology takes effort. Everyone should be so lucky to have at least one friend, that no matter what the technology, can help make sense of the situation and enable you to become proficient with it. For me, this was the case when trying to understand the relationship between flat screen TVs and HDTV. The same goes when I wanted to know about the differences in game consoles and what exactly was Xbox Live. Time aids in these situations. It allows more people to become familiar with the technology (and thus spread the knowledge). It lets those that power the technology agree to some standards, and it lets all sorts of helper companies into the market to make life easier.

Certain technologies take longer than others to become mainstream. Digital cameras took six years to become the standard. iPods helped digital music make sense in about three. Satellite radio may not have a substantial market share, but after three years, people seem to get it. As expected though, the online world seems to move slightly quicker. While it may have taken about six years before banner ads caught on, subsequent formats rolled out and became adopted seemingly overnight. That makes sense really when thinking about a banner, which led to the skyscraper, which led to the rectangle. In most cases, the difference between one and the other is just size, not technology, which meant adapting to it didn’t take much time.

In “those days,” that is when new ad formats came out two per year, it seemed that the ad networks often led the charge. As aggregators of ad inventory who could add new sites and new advertisers in scale, they were well suited to help spread the adoption of an ad-unit. Advertisers could give them the ad, and publishers, after a slight tweak to their template, could start showing a variety of ads. “Those days” though seem to be over, or at least the players behind them are shifting.

The shift in power can be seen clearly with Google’s push into video. The company announced on Tuesday, May 22, that their content network would contain click to play video ads, in addition to their almost ubiquitous text link ads and occasional graphic ad. Interestingly, in almost typical Google fashion, publishers get automatically opted-in to the program and do not have a choice, as of yet, to opt-out. Similar traffic levers were pulled when content ads first came out with advertisers not having a choice to opt-out of them. For publishers’ sakes, the real ads will hopefully be more attractive than the sample below.

Many sites have already picked apart the likely success, or failure, of Google’s ad product. Pat McCarthy, on his ConversionRater.com, makes a great point about Video and its inability to allow for the type of testing on which most of us with ad network backgrounds have come to rely. But, we as direct marketers are not the audience for these ads. People who already use and make video as part of what they do are who Google seeks to lure. Big brands currently use AdSense, but only because they have to. Video in theory could become a format they want to use.

Unfortunately, for the rest of us, the world of online video seems as understandable as flat screen TV and HDTV did three years ago. If a company hasn’t already released a YouTube like site, they have tried to create a video ad network to support them. All within days of each other, releases we saw that

• The IAB has released guidelines for video ads
• AOL purchased streaming video enabler Lighteningcast.com, a company that AOL had used for its online video ad streaming since 2002 and will merge with Advertising.com to create a 300 site and 175 million monthly streaming ad network
• Winstar Interactive has launched their Interactive Video Network and will represent video pre-roll on HistoryChannel.com, Biography.com, AETV.com, and FHMus.com
• Eyeblaster has launched Video Studio, which “elevates video to the next level, enabling the wide delivery of higher quality, fully interactive video experiences” according to company president Gal Trifon..
• Behavioral ad network Tacoda named Klipmart its “flagship provider” for in-page video ads
• You Tube, not to be outdone by the myriad of companies entering their space, announced a cellphone strategy

Despite the popularity of online video, as a market it remains about as easy to understand as HDTV was when it came out. The components sound simple enough – content, distribution, and monetization, but each has its complexities. Regarding content, at issue is that the creator of the content is more often than not the one that makes it available for distribution. Even when the owner of the content does control the distribution, whether monetization comes by way of the user paying or viewing ads has not been resolved. Even if they watch ads, whether those should occur in the beginning, middle, or end and for how long needs standardization. Then you have Google jumping into the fray making news about video, yet offering something completely outside of the ongoing video dialogue. And to think, almost all of this has happened in one year. Video will alter the advertising landscape; today’s flashy mortgage ad will not go away, but it will soon become a five to thirty second Pixar style release.