Video Ads - An Overview

The term video advertising encompasses online display advertisements such as Middle Page Units that have video within them, but it is generally accepted that it refers to advertising that occurs on Internet television. It is served before, during and/or after a video stream on the internet.

The advertising units used in this instance are pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll and all of these ad units are like the traditional spot advertising you see on television, although often they are "cut-down" to be a shorter version than their TV counterparts if they are run online.

Broadcast websites such as Sky.com and itv.com have such advertising on their sites, as do newspaper websites such as Telegraph.co.uk, and Guardian.co.uk. In 2010, video ads accounted for 12.8% of all videos viewed and 1.2% of all minutes spent viewing video online.

In November 2010 Seesaw offered a new pay television offering of their already freely available video on demand internet television services without advertising.

Video continues to prove itself an effective medium for raising brand awareness and driving better conversion rates.  Mediaplex is pleased to offer full support for the In-Banner Video format.

The service is reliably supported by Akamai - a Premier Authorized Adobe Flash Video Streaming Service (FVSS) provider and the world's largest Content Delivery Network (CDN). Akamai delivers live streaming of real-time audio and video in the Flash FLV format and is scalable to meet the skyrocketing demand for high quality rich media content, ensuring a seamless end-to-end user experience.

In-banner video support is also complemented by robust Mediaplex reporting on an 'unlimited' number of interactions including:

1. Flash Video Player events (i.e. Video Start, Pause, Stop, Completion, Audio On/Off, Replay, Fast Forward)
2. Expand /Collapse actions on video expand panel
3. Exit links from video
4. 'Custom' events (specific to ad)

Ten Online Video Ad Competitors Compared

Here is a look at 10 of the top players in the market, ranging from startups to some of the Web’s biggest companies.

BrightRoll

BrightRoll offers both pre-roll (meaning ads before a video plays) and mid-roll (ads that take place between segments of a video) advertising and places ads based on contextual, behavioral and demographic targeting. To determine content, BrightRoll looks at information like tags and keyword profiles, while using data for its publishers from ComScore to create demographic-based campaigns. The company claims to be the fastest growing video advertising company with more than 800 million ads served.

Video Egg

YouTube’s approach to video advertising closely mirrors that of VideoEgg, who powers video uploads for major publishers like Bebo and AOL. VideoEgg uses what they call a “ticker” that shows a promotional banner within the video that can be clicked if a user wants to learn more about the product or service being advertised. In the example below, an ad is shown for the film SuperBad that when clicked shows a trailer for the movie. Ads are sold through the egg network, a collection of VideoEgg’s largest publishers serving more than 15 million videos per day. The format is less-intrusive than pre-roll advertising since it doesn’t delay the actual video from running and is optional for the user.

Advertising.com

AOL’s online advertising network, Advertising.com, now offers pre-roll video as well as in-banner video (these video ads that display in conventional banner ad sizes such as 728×90). In-banner ads seem to be growing more common on content-heavy sites replacing traditional graphic-based banner ads. Most in-banner ads require a user to click them in order to play, but some more invasive ads start automatically. In the example below, a video ad is displayed in an article on investment site TheStreet.com.

ROO

Roo is a resource for web sites looking for video content, video producers distributing content, and advertisers that want to advertise via video. This works by Roo licensing video content and selling advertising across their network of sites that host it. Unlike several of its competitors, Roo gives web publishers control over the advertising, allowing you to sell your own ads in addition to those sold by Roo. Through its content channels (such as sports, music, etc.), Roo targets pre-roll advertising based on user interests and demographics.

Clip Syndicate

Clip Syndicate is a video network comprising of web publishers, video content producers, and advertisers. Like Roo, Clip Syndicate licenses video content from a variety of sources and distributes it via a network of web sites. Web publishers then have the option to pay a fee to host videos and sell their own ads, or can do opt for a revenue share on the ads that Clip Syndicate sells for them. At this time, Clip Syndicate ads consist primarily of 15-second pre-roll video ads.

BrightCove

The massively funded BrightCove operates the BrightCove Syndication Marketplace which connects video producers, content web sites, and advertisers. The company offers several different advertising formats, including combined video commercial and banner ad, video overlay (a small ad that appears while the video is playing; similar to VideoEgg), or player takeover, where the sponsor’s ad occupies the entire video player and can either be clicked or skipped.

Broadband Enterprises

Broadband Enterprises is another online video network consisting of producers, publishers, and advertisers. The company claims more than 450 publishers including Fox News and Warner Brothers that deliver over 400 million monthly video streams. It appears the majority of the ads Broadband Enterprises sell are of the pre-roll variety.

Value Click

The largest remaining independent ad network, ValueClick’s video ad program is currently in beta. ValueClick’s “In-stream” product displays pre and post-roll video ads, while also offering in-banner ads to place ads in traditional banner slots. In the example below, a post-roll ad for TaxBrain is shown, while the web site also makes use of ValueClick’s traditional banner network by placing a 728×90 TaxBrain ad at the top of the page.

AdBrite

AdBrite, which operates a marketplace for a wide variety of online advertising including text, banners, and in-line ads (those ads that turn words on a page into ads) recently launched InVideo, its own video player and ad network. The ads show up in “split screen” format so you can continue watching your video as the ad is displayed. InVideo also allows you to place your own watermark into the videos, a nice feature for branding your video content.

Adap.tv

Adap.tv places a variety of ads through the video watching experience. While allowing you to have pre and post-roll video ads, adap.tv also attempts to analyze the content of the video to provide relevant text ads while the video is playing. In the example below, the video hosts are talking about the movie “The Prestige” and a text ad promoting the DVD is shown. ScanScout offers a similar technology.

Source: www.mojorichmedia.com, en.wikipedia.org and mashable.com