Eyeballs Are Great, but Revenues Would Be Better

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

Online video sites rack up traffic numbers

Google sites enjoyed more than 100 million unique online video viewers in December 2008, according to comScore Video Metrix. Google’s closest competitor in the online video arms race is Fox Interactive Media, which owns properties such as MySpace and Photobucket, the online photo- and video-sharing site.

Some 5.9 billion videos were viewed on Google sites, with its YouTube property accounting for nearly 100% of the total, according to comScore.

Nice traffic. But marketers want to know how online video hubs can generate revenues from all the engagement they are receiving.

“It’s misleading trying to equate numbers of video viewers with opportunities to make money,” said David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer.

“YouTube may have the most visitors, but the vast majority of videos that people view on the megasite are not the kind of trusted content that attracts the typical brand marketer. The mindset of these marketers is protective, and placing ads against content they’re unsure of does not play out too well.”

Mr. Hallerman added, “Most YouTube streams are short-form content, generally less than 5 minutes. These brief streams can at best support only 15-second ads, or even shorter. Longer-form videos, such as full TV shows, are a more hospitable environment for the bulk of advertisers willing to spend for online video advertising.”

YouTube has made deals for longer-form, professionally created content. But even that might backfire, Mr. Hallerman cautioned.

“While the vast amount of available videos continues to attract a large audience, those short clips also create more clutter and more distraction, which takes away some of the potential value of that professional content,” he said. “In contrast, the relative simplicity of a video site such as Hulu creates a more direct connection among audience, video and advertiser.”

eMarketer projects advertisers will spend $850 million on video ads in 2009—a modest total, particularly considering that an estimated 84% of Internet users will watch online video this year.

Online Video Ad Spending Cools, Still Popular

FEBRUARY 2, 2009

Decreased growth is still growth.

Although online video ad spending will still grow by a healthy 22.5% in 2009, the growth rate will actually fall from 2008’s level of 36%, according to projections released in January 2009 by AccuStream iMedia Research. The company said growth would rise again in 2010 to 28.2%.

AccuStream said spending reached $2.1 billion in 2008. It also reported that CPMs on premium preroll videos averaged $35 in 2008.

AccuStream’s spending numbers are far higher than most other estimates. For example, eMarketer put online video ad spending at $587 million in 2008. However, AccuStream is highly inclusive and counts all online-video-related infrastructure in its estimates.

eMarketer also forecast online video ad spending growth would dip in 2009, to 44.9%, down from 81% growth in 2008, before rising again in 2010.

Despite the slowing growth predicted for 2009, online video ads are still rising in popularity at a pace that would be welcomed by most other ad media.

Online Video Growth Continues

JANUARY 15, 2009

Is all of it monetizable?

As more data about 2008 Internet usage in the US is released, online video increasingly looks like one of the year’s big winners. US Internet users viewed 12.7 billion online videos during November 2008 alone, up more than one-third over November 2007, according to data released in January 2009 by comScore Video Metrix.

comScore said more than 146 million US Internet users watched an average of 87 videos per viewer in November 2008—that’s 77% of the total US Internet audience.

eMarketer also puts online video viewers at more than three-quarters of US Internet users, and estimates that percentage will rise to 88% by 2012.

For marketers, this growth raises the question of how much online video can be monetized.

“Although many consumers are loath to sit through ads when watching online video, they seem even less willing to pay directly for content,” said David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer.

“As a result, content owners and publishers are focusing on ad-funded models. Except for movies, some premium TV fare and select sports content—which remain attached to transactional models—most TV-oriented programming has migrated to advertising-based formats,” Mr. Hallerman continued.

eMarketer estimates online video ad spending will reach $4.6 billion in 2013, up from $587 million in 2008.

The Next Step in User-Generated Content

DECEMBER 29, 2008

Paul Verna, Senior Analyst
With so much user-generated media populating the Web and mobile channels, content aggregation will become more important than ever in 2009. In the coming year, expect to see real-time aggregation tools that combine algorithmic approaches with human input—like a cross between Techmeme and FriendFeed.

Techmeme is an aggregation tool that uses algorithms to scan the Web for tech-related news stories. FriendFeed is also an aggregator, but it lets users set up custom feeds to pool content from other social sites.

These aggregation tools will develop from the ground up, much like the content itself. They could make it easier for consumers to find video and other content.

Furthermore, in a climate in which advertising is the main (some say the only) means of monetizing user-generated content, aggregators stand to earn more per visitor than the sites that actually carry the user-created content.

An August 2008 study by YuMe and Collins Stewart estimated that online video advertising CPM rates for content aggregators and creators ranged from $20 to $35, compared with $10 to $15 for user-driven sites such as Bebo, Metacafe and YouTube. In addition, the approximate sell-through rates on aggregation sites were 50%, as opposed to 10% for user-generated content sites.

These estimates put aggregators somewhere between premium sites and user-generated sites in terms of the CPMs they command and the rates at which they sell their ad inventory.

To be clear, the trend at hand concerns user-driven aggregation, and the YuMe/Collins Stewart study looked at professional aggregators. It does not specifically address user-generated aggregation, but it reinforces the need for such tools. The larger point is that aggregation is becoming increasingly important as more and more content proliferates across the Web.

Now that the concept is being co-opted by average users (not just analysts and bloggers), it seems that all the pieces are in place for user-generated aggregation to be a real story in the coming year.

Seth Godin: Sliced bread and other marketing delights

Two-year countdown to massive growth: Online Video

Two-year countdown to massive growth

If eMarketer’s original estimate of $1.3 billion for video ad spending in 2008 appears to have been off the mark, the question is more a change of methodology than of perspective. That is, the basis has changed, but eMarketer’s prognosis for online video advertising has not.

It now appears that the market will take until 2010 to surpass the $1-billion mark. Beyond 2010, huge additional sums will go to online video advertising each succeeding year. Two essential factors will support that growth: more trusted video content to sustain advertising and more large advertisers (brand marketers, mainly) seeing enough scale to enter this market in a big way.

While only 2% of total Internet ad spending will go to video in 2008, that share will be nearly five times higher by the end of 2013.

Further, as total Internet ad spending approaches total television ad levels in 2013, it will become commonplace for TV network ad sales to be a two-way play, with media buyers looking to both online and TV for most campaigns, even in the upfront market.

Online Video Ad Spending Growth

AUGUST 14, 2008

Get ready for a stream of ad dollars.

eMarketer predicts online video ad spending in the US will reach $505 million this year and keep climbing through at least 2013. Over the next five years, growth will peak in 2012 at 78.9% above the 2011 spending level—reaching $3.4 billion.

The rapid growth means that advertisers will spend more than 10 times as much on online video in 2013 as they will this year.

If the saying "advertisers follow eyeballs" is still true for one medium, it is online video. More than one-half of the US population now watches online video, and eMarketer predicts there will be 190 million online video viewers in the US in 2012. At that point nearly nine out of 10 Internet users will be watching online video.

"However, even if online video advertisers are following eyeballs, they are far more tentative than the audience itself," said David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer. "Figuring out the best types of video content to attach their ads to is one of the big questions. Is it short-form video or longer pieces? Is it professionally created video, or can user-generated video ever become a safe harbor for large numbers of brand marketers?"

Glam Media launching revenue-sharing video platform

Glam CEO Samir Arora

(Credit: Rafe Needleman/CNET Networks)

CARLSBAD, Calif.--Glam Media is launching a new platform for content distribution, the GlamTV Platform. It will allow the video assets in its woman-focused network of sites to be shared to new destinations, and more importantly, everyone in the value chain of the distribution will collect a piece of the advertising revenue. Videos on the Brightcove platform will also work on GlamTV.

"It's a rights-managed platform end to end," Glam Media CEO Samir Arora told me at the D6 conference here. An example he provided: Let's say the editor of SheFinds, an independent site, saw some video on a Glam site that she wanted for her site.

On the TV Platform, she would grab the embed code for the video, but unlike with a YouTube video, once the media played, all the participants in the value chain would share in the advertising revenue--SheFinds, the Glam site that acquired the video, and potentially the contract video producer as well. Arora was pleased to remind me that Glam is currently running over-$50 CPM ad rates, so its publishers can afford to split some of their revenues.

The Glam TV Platform will also allow publishers to pick and choose videos from around the network, bundle them into their own branded widgets, and then make those widgets available to others in the network. Again, when the widgets play videos, all participants get a piece of the action.

Glam makes this economy function by securing and managing the rights for all the video assets that go into its network. In most cases, the company acquires blanket rights for videos, but it can also accept more restrictive rights from publishers who want to control where the assets they paid for end up.

Various display options for GlamTV content.

The content-publishing platform lets users build widgets with custom video playlists.

Online Video Viewing Surges

According to data from the comScore Video Metrix service, U.S. Internet users viewed 11.5 billion online videos during March, 2008, representing a 13-percent gain versus February and a 64-percent gain versus March 2007.

In March, Google Sites ranked as the top U.S. video property with more than 4.3 billion videos viewed (38 percent share of all videos), gaining 2.6 share points versus the previous month. YouTube.com accounted for 98 percent of all videos viewed at Google Sites. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 477 million videos, followed by Yahoo! Sites and Viacom Digital.



Source: comScore Video Metrix, May 2008 Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks. Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.

Other notable findings from the March survey include:

73.7 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
84.8 million viewers watched 4.3 billion videos on YouTube.com (50.4 videos per viewer).
47.7 million viewers watched 400 million videos on MySpace.com (8.4 videos per viewer).
The average online video duration was 2.8 minutes.
The average online video viewer watched 235 minutes of video.

Standardizing Online Video Ads

APRIL 30, 2008
Growing the format by reining it in.
The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) is set to publish new guidelines for online video ads on Monday May 5th. The group has been taking suggestions and input from industry members on proposed guidelines for a month.
The guidelines do not prevent new online video ad formats from developing in the future, but they may cut down on proliferation of forms, which can frustrate consumers and make the business of selling ads more difficult.


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eMarketer predicts that spending on online rich media and video ads will account for nearly one-fifth of all online ad spending by 2012, up from 9.7% of all online ad spending in 2007.

"Video ads command higher prices than static display advertising," said David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer. "That both boosts overall ad spending and draws in more dollars from traditional brand marketers, who have been reluctant to commit much of their ad budgets to the Internet."
Ongoing experiments with video ad formats and a lack of standards have, in part, kept the online video ad market from even stronger revenue growth.
Other hurdles have included limited high-quality video content to attract big advertisers and unresolved issues such as traffic measurement, which will be needed to gain the trust of the most deep-pocketed marketers.
As those problems are solved, spending will increase. eMarketer predicts that US online rich media and video ad spending will total more than $9.4 billion in 2012, which is more than four times as much as the 2007 spending level.

For its part, the IAB said that the guidelines and best practices address the most widely used current in-stream ad products, including linear video ads, non-linear video ads and companion ads.
"Digital video has matured beyond the experimentation stage, and continues to be one of the most exciting platforms within the interactive landscape," said Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the IAB. "The creation of these formats and guidelines will allow digital video to continue to flourish on two levels—creativity and marketplace efficiency."
The IAB said that the guidelines attempt to simplify digital video ad buying across multiple sites with minimum common ad specifications for video, overlay and companion ads. As with standardized ad formats in other media, they are designed to make operations more efficient through a common set of creative submission guidelines.
"In general, the attempt by the online ad industry to create standards and guidelines is most often a good thing," Mr. Hallerman said.
Jeremy Fain, senior director of industry services at the IAB, told eMarketer that the standards were designed to make it easier to buy online video ads on a mass scale.
"The guidelines take out the friction, gather the most widespread formats and make it easier for large agencies to buy across larger audiences online—making digital video a serious portion of their online plan."
He said that designers would still have plenty of room to create.
"All of our guidelines are minimum standards so as to not stifle innovation."
Learn how the online video ad market is developing in Western Europe. Read eMarketer's Online Video Advertising: Focus on the UK, France and Germany report.

Award Winning TV Spot

Last year the EPURON GmbH spot for wind energy use won best TV ad spot from Germany at the ad festival in Cannes. It was put together by Nordpol + Hamburg.

Report: $6.6B in Online Video Ads by 2012

Ad revenue from streaming video, the very category writers just struck for three months over, will be worth $6.6 billion in 2012, according to new research by Parks Associates. The firm estimates the same category was worth $1.4 billion in 2007. The reason these numbers are higher than others we’ve seen is partially because they include display advertising shown around videos, not just ads inserted into video streams.

“The bottom line is this market is growing fast and will be a significant source of revenue for the network operators,” said Parks Associates analyst Harry Wang.

Parks Associates said ad spending on all multimedia platforms, including mobile and IPTV VOD, will be worth $12.6 billion in 2012, up from $1.8 billion in 2007.

Just FYI, if you want to include paid online video and exclude mobile and IPTV, Parks Associates has a different estimate for you (from a different analyst at the firm): $11.3 billion in total revenue for online video in 2012, up from $2.8 billion in 2008.

I’m not sure if writers should feel good or bad about finally striking a deal to get 2 percent of this multi-billion-dollar space in 2010-2011. On the one hand, a small portion of a large amount is still a lot. On the other — clearly the AMPTP generates revenue in online video — even if this estimate’s 50 percent off we’re still talking multiple billions of dollars. Multiple billions the writers won’t see.

Web Distribution Changes Definition of Hit TV

The medium is the revolution

Online distribution of TV programming is fundamentally altering interpretations of what constitutes a hit show, reports Advertising Age.

In an interview with Omniture CEO Josh James, the executive says shows that never garnered a substantial TV audience might have had a better chance at survival online.

Networks must determine a show's potential audience to extract what platform they're most likely to view, then design a push to drive people there, he added.

Metrics firms like Omniture are currently working with networks to measure the size of online streaming audiences.

Giving advertisers clear profiles of online audiences will (obviously) help to accurately and fully monetize those streams, James emphasizes.

The CEO's faith in the influence of online television adds weight to the ongoing writers strike. Perceiving a shift in audience habits from television to the internet, writers are attempting to negotiate compensation for shows and films streamed online.

But networks have proven reluctant to give up the honey pot. At present, media streamed online is considered "promotional," and writers are not entitled to any part of it.

What We Learned At Pubcon Las Vegas

We are decompressing from a trip to Las Vegas
and Pubcon. If you are one of those who goes
to events like Web 2.0 or TechCrunch40,
Pubcon might be an eye-opener.

Topix' Chris Tolles who goes every year
summarized the event last year. He's right
about this being a pragmatic crew. We
couldn't find people who are out to change
the world or who are looking to get eye-balls
and will worry about monetization later.
Pubcon'ers seem consumed with increasing
conversion rates by 5% on some obscure
network of web properties that caters to
retiring baby boomers or people who traffic
in auto spoilers. These people will look at
you side-wise if you exert any energy that is
not about putting cash in your pocket. One
speaker derisively pointed out how much
Google juice Nike wastes because it refuses
the advise of its SEOs to use the keywords
'shoes' on their home page - Nike's marketing
department insists on callings its product
'footware.' This is a cardinal sin at Pubcon.


The high priest at Pubcon is Google algo-god
Matt Cutts who gave a keynote address one
morning. Cutts was good to stick around
during the event but he put a chill up the
spine of speakers in one seminar who were
speaking about link-buying.

As our readers may know, Google recently
tweaked its algo to put the hurt on companies
that traffic in paid links such as PayPerPost
and TextLinkAds. The biggest gripe at Pubcon
was that Google has amassed history's
largest, fastest treasure chest by selling
links but now it's is punishing others for
selling links. As in Pubcon blogger put it "I
just won an iPod Nano and now I'm going to
blog about it and link to the company that
gave me the Nano. I'm then going to link to
Matt Cutts blog and ask him if this is banned
behavior."

Perhaps the lightest and most visionary
presentation was given by Demand Media's
Richard Rosenblatt. The former MySpace
frontman ran a short video taken by
Justine.tv's Justine, showing the pair
descending into Las Vegas on the Rosenblatt
private jet. There was really no point to the
video and that's exactly what Rosenblatt
wanted us to leave with. People want to watch
video on the net even if it's lame. So Demand
Media is making a major push to fill up its
legions of web sites with video. And if you
can get users to make and submit video for
free that's all the better.


The big picture that Rosenblatt wanted us to
understand is that the 3 word searches (the
long tail) more often than not do not return
the helpful results that searchers seek.
Rosenblatt is buying domains, working seo and
filling up long-tail sites with content that
he feels will be helpful. That way the
domains that he bought for tens of millions
of dollars will provide greater returns than
what the sellers thought they could achieve.
The exit is clearly an IPO that will enable
Rosenblatt to upgrade his jet.

Now, the Clicking Is to Watch the Ads, Not Skip Them

By STUART ELLIOTT

FOR generations, advertising interrupted the entertainment that Americans wanted to read, hear or watch. Now, in a turnabout, advertising is increasingly being presented as entertainment — and surprisingly, the idea of all ads, all the time, is gaining some favor.

One reason is the proliferation of broadband Internet connections, which make it easier for computer users to watch or download video clips. That is enabling media companies, agencies and advertisers to create Web sites devoted to commercials and other forms of advertising for amusement, rather than hard-core huckstering.

Oddly, the trend runs counter to another powerful impulse among consumers: the growing desire to avoid advertising. TV viewers, for instance, are spending billions of dollars a year for TiVo and other digital video recorders that help them zip through or zap commercials, and click-through rates for banner Web ads are declining.

The difference between “watching a commercial on a Web site and in your living room,” said Michael Jacobs, executive vice president and executive creative director at MRM Worldwide in New York, is that online is “an opt-in audience; you’re choosing to be there.”

“It’s the nature of the Web to offer a destination you know you can go to and know what you’re going to see,” said Mr. Jacobs, whose agency is part of the McCann Worldgroup division of the Interpublic Group of Companies.

“There’s certainly an audience for entertainment as part of the offering,” he added. “The numbers seem to support it.”

For example, veryfunnyads.com, a broadband Web site operated by the TBS cable network, has delivered more than 63 million video clip views since its introduction last August.

“It’s a very straightforward premise: You’re going to have a funny experience, and you’re going to have it every 30 seconds,” said Ken Schwab, senior vice president for programming at the TBS and TNT networks, parts of the Turner Broadcasting System division of Time Warner.

•

The funny-ad Web site is part of a rebranding campaign for the TBS network, which carries the theme “Very funny.” The goal is to cultivate an identity for TBS as a home for sitcoms and humorous movies.

“A lot of people talk about zipping through commercials because the average break doesn’t hold the promise of being entertaining,” Mr. Schwab said. By contrast, he said, “we have a very clear consumer proposition, on the site and in our shows.”

The concept of veryfunnyads.com has been expanded onto TBS, Mr. Schwab said, as the network will “call out” some commercials as “very funny ads” in hopes of keeping viewers from changing channels.

“I’m in the industry, and I’ll fast-forward through the ads most of the time,” said David Droga, creative chairman at the Droga5 agency in New York. “But I’ll stop for the good ones.”

“You put choice on the table, you change the whole game,” Mr. Droga said, adding: “Everything is about control. If an ad is interesting to you, you’ll have the conversation with the brand. If it’s not, it’s a waste of time.”

In about a month, Mr. Droga plans to test his theory with the trial introduction by Droga5 and its partner, the Publicis Groupe, of a Web site named honeyshed.com.

Mr. Droga described the concept as “MTV meets QVC,” offering consumers in the intended audience of ages 18 to 30 product information in the form of entertaining video clips rather than traditional commercials. The clips are to run two to three minutes apiece, he added, and be presented by hosts considered authorities in categories like cars, clothing or computers.

“The only reason we have any chance of being successful is transparency,” Mr. Droga said — that is, “if people know they’re being sold to, you can celebrate the sell.”

The USA Network unit of NBC Universal, part of General Electric, also intends to climb aboard the pitch wagon celebrating advertising as entertainment with an online effort centered on brand-centric content.

Plans call for a Web site next year that would include commercials and movie trailers as well as features like social networking and tools that would let visitors make ads of their own. The site is tentatively named didja.com, as in “Didja see that?”

“It’s all about relevance,” said Chris McCumber, senior vice president for marketing and brand strategy at USA Network. “Consumers want to be entertained on their own time, on their own terms.”

“If a spot is not relevant, you’re going to want to tune it out,” he added. “This will be a platform for consumers to experience their favorite commercials or find out more information about a product.”

•

The proliferation of portals dedicated to advertising as entertainment could mean the trend is already peaking, just as cover articles in magazines about a stock market boom are often followed by plunging indexes.

“I don’t think it is so much about putting entertaining commercials on the Web as it is about brands providing immersive experiences for consumers of which entertainment is a component,” said Mr. Jacobs of MRM, whose agency recently won praise for musical Webisodes for Intel, directed by the humorist Christopher Guest, which are appearing on Web sites like youtube.com and itgetseasier.com.

The responses to a survey this week on the Adweek Web site (adweek.com) suggest that advertising as entertainment is still a work in progress.

As of yesterday afternoon, 13 percent of respondents agreed the portals were “great fits for the current pop culture,” while 43 percent called them “too limited and doomed to fail.” The remaining respondents, 44 percent, agreed with a statement that they are “complete wild cards; let’s wait and see.”

The Online Video Call to Action

JULY 30, 2007

'Have you seen this Web video?'

Over half of online adults have used the Internet to watch or download video, and nearly a fifth do so on a typical day, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project's online video study, conducted in February and March 2007.

Among Internet users with broadband access at both home and work, nearly three-quarters watched or downloaded video.

More than half of online video viewers shared video links, and three-quarters said they had received video links from others.

Young adults were the most likely to rate video content, post feedback or upload video.

Mary Madden, a senior research specialist at Pew and the lead author of the report, said, "Young adults are among the most contagious carriers when it comes to understanding how viral videos propagate online. Younger users are the most eager and active contributors to the online video sphere; they are more likely than older users to watch, upload, rate, comment upon and share the video they find."

News content was the most popular genre with every age group except for those ages 18 to 29. For those young adults, comedy is a bigger draw, with 56% watching humorous videos, compared with 43% who say they watch news videos.

Some online videos demand forwarding, rating or other actions. Internet video ads also tend to induce some kind of action among viewers. Typically this involves checking out a company Web site. That was true for 43% of the respondents in a 2007 survey from the Kelsey Group and 31% of respondents in a similar study by the Online Publishers Association.

Online Video Ad Sticking Points, Pt.2

JULY 27, 2007


David Hallerman, Senior Analyst

Continued from Part One.

How much advertising people are willing to endure to watch video content for free remains unresolved.

While many people seem to appreciate the long-standing concept of free content in exchange for viewing advertising, several factors unique to the Internet turn free content on its head. That includes not only user-generated video content competing with the professionally created kind (at least for the audience's attention, if not always by quality), but also the wealth of the Web choices, video or not, that an individual can click away to in an instant if an ad annoys.

Still, 54% of the US online video viewers surveyed by the Online Publishers Association called advertising a fair way for Web sites to provide free professionally produced videos. However, implied on the flip side of that data is that 46% of respondents do not believe that advertising in exchange for free content is a fair deal. A further flip side implication in the data: 48% of respondents would rather pay to see their favorite online videos than watch an ad.

The length of online video ads has become a key pivot in determining how best to use the format. For example, NBC Universal recently announced that it would not accept online video ads longer than 15 seconds, at least to go along with short-form content (but it would continue to allow 30-second spots during full-length TV shows).

When Piper Jaffray specifically asked US adult Internet users if they are willing to watch advertising before a free online video, the responses split nearly equally into three groups: the 30% who are not willing, the 31% who said it depends on the content and the 39% (combined) who are willing (with 25% only willing depending on the length of the ad).

With near-even splits like that for the fee-free question and for ad-length concerns (see Part One of this article), it's clear that for both online video advertising and content, the debate on how best to use video for Internet advertising remains up in the air.

Online Video Advertising Sticking Points

JULY 26, 2007


David Hallerman, Senior Analyst

Even with US online video advertising spending projected to surpass $1 billion next year, $2 billion in 2009 and $3 billion in 2010, according to eMarketer, several factors hold back growth of TV-like proportions.

One crucial concern comes from uncertainties about the audience's limits, with questions about its willingness even to watch video ads online and how long the ads would play if they run. Audience reactions to online video advertising will ultimately shape how marketers and Web publishers use this medium.

Some research indicates that most people think Internet video advertising is highly irritating. According to the "Online Video Advertising" report from online advertising company Burst Media, 77.5% of those who watch video online find video ads intrusive, while 62.2% say they disrupt their Web surfing experience.

And despite the relative novelty of video on the Web, the problem of too many video ads was the least-liked aspect of online video mentioned by the most Internet users in a Synovate study commissioned by video search company Clipblast!

Yet even for long-form, professionally produced content such as TV shows or movies, 79% of Internet users polled by Piper Jaffray said they are not willing to pay. Is the implication, then, that they would accept video ads in exchange for free content?

Read the conclusion of this extended article tomorrow in Part Two.

Revver Revs Up 'Impressions,' Adds CPM Model To Online Video Ads

Revver Revs Up 'Impressions,' Adds CPM Model To Online Video Adsby Joe MandeseIn a sign that the social media and user-generated content market may be developing a traditional advertising model, revenue-sharing online video aggregator Revver this morning announced a plan to begin offering "impression-based advertising products" to advertisers and agencies. - Read the whole story...

Video Ads: Every Startup Has A Different Solution

from TechCrunch by Nick Gonzalez

It may seem weird, but I’ve been eagerly awaiting the day when I see ads in my viral video. eMarketer expects online video advertising to nearly double in 2008 to $1.3 billion, but no one’s really nailed a scalable ad platform for video. However, Google’s been quietly testing their own system and there are a bunch of other startups tackling it as well.

There are a couple key issues they’re all struggling with as they try and generate the greatest amount of ad revenue. There’s still some uncertainty about where to put the ads (pre/post/interstitial?). Even the type or length of the ad is up for debate. A recent study found longer ads were more effective at branding, while conventional wisdom has cast doubt on users sitting through the longer plugs.

After deciding on the format, determining the content of the video in order to generate relevant ads is yet another tough problem. It’s also a dire matter for big brands that don’t want to risk being associated with inflammatory content. Finally, these ad platforms will need publishers, advertisers and a marketplace to trade in.

Here’s a look at what people are doing in video advertising:

Definitely the team to watch, YouTube is treading carefully, experimenting with text ads running along the bottom of the video that users can click on for a full video ad. They’re going to be testing the system with some of their top content producers and word on the street is that the terms are pretty good.

Revver splits ad revenue 50/50 with publishers. They run ads at the end of viral videos, which might mean that people are still paying close attention after watching the main content. However, this also means they lose some precious real estate to help drive traffic to other videos on their network like YouTube does. Revver filters the content themselves, tying in the appropriate ads.

Similar to Revver, VideoEgg helps publishers deliver and monetize their video inventory. It’s a very hands on approach suitable for larger brands that have tight control over the quality and context of their content. They serve up over 20 million videos daily across their EggNetwork. Ads show up alongside lead ins to other videos as well.

ScanScout’s technology scans each video and determines content, with ads delivered contextually to match each scene. They run text ads along the bottom of the videos based on context derived from audio analysis and user behavior.

They’re like adsense for video, tying contextual text ads based on the content of a video. It looks similar to what YouTube is aiming for. When videos play, Adap.tv digs up relevant Amazon products and Looksmart ads to populate an ad bar on the bottom of the video at key moments. They use tags and other meta data, as well as speech to text translations to find out what the video is about.

AdBrite was one of the first to overlay ads on videos with their InVideo platform. Adbrite has created an embeddable video player similar to YouTube. If we choose to show a video on TechCrunch, we can use this embeddable player, and at our option it will include Adbrite ads and our logo as a watermark. Anyone who takes the content and embeds it on their own site will show the same video, with the same ads and watermark. And all click backs on the video go to the original site.

The most interesting ad play, BroadRamp wants to make everything you see on your video a possible point of sale. See a t-shirt you like? Just click the video to buy it now. Tagging or programmatically generating the links to products from the video may not scale or prove too difficult. Their core business is still video content delivery systems, however.

Formerly Podzinger, Everzing searches audio and video. Since they don’t own the content they can’t insert ads on the video content, but their speech-to-text transcription means they can help solve the problem of finding out the subject of a video.

A video search engine like Everyzing, Blinkx analyzes videos speech and meta data to tease out the content of the video. They also claim to use visual recognition as well. However, Blinkx has also leveraged their technology to launch adHoc, contextual advertising based on the content of the video.

Another video search engine currently running in private beta, Cast.TV looks at a video’s meta data and surrounding links to determine more context around the video. We’ve been impressed with how well it works. They haven’t discussed plans to incorporate advertising, however.

Coming up with a kick ass, scalable ad platform solution for social video that satisfies the needs of publishers, advertisers, and viewers is only a piece of the problem. While finding the most effective format will take a lot of testing until consumers reveal the most effective methods, the platforms will also need video content to monetize. Since well defined video properties with targeted content can work with sponsors on established video ad networks, the ideal market for these platforms remains effectively monetizing the jumble of amateur viral video floating around on social networks and YouTube. However, YouTube, which currently owns the lion’s share of video on the net, seems to be taking their time developing the solution in house.

That leaves becoming a destination, partnerships, or acquisition as possible outs. Video search sites like Blinkx and Everyzing are currently monetizing their search pages, but can’t take full advantage of their platforms by embedding ads into the content they link to. While these sites offer deeper video search, existing as a destination site is also a tough path that goes up against established web properties like Google, Yahoo, and AOL. In a slightly different way of going it alone, AdBrite has been going directly to publishers with their InVideo player. Adap.tv has been testing out partnerships, trying their platform out on MetaCafe.

As with most ad platforms, advertisers and publishers will be trying them out for effectiveness. In the end, the startups that can deliver the most return to these two will win out.