Posts Tagged ‘promotion’

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Common Video Advertising Formats & Methods – An Overview

For any advertising method to be effective, it has to have a target audience that is consuming the medium with which the advertising is attached to. That being said, advertisers are starting to realize that online video advertising is now an effective method to attract large relevant audiences. Online video consumption has grown tremendously in the past few years and as a result, video sharing and video search companies are poised to reap the benefits of video advertising.

Because of the keen interest of the advertisers towards the online video segment, many video sharing sites have been encouraged to come up with different formats for the placement of video advertisements. The quantum of investment in this segment has fueled innovation of the methods in which video sites are deploying online video monetization and advertising programs. In-stream (pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll) advertisement formats have been in existence longest and have produced a good share of revenue for online video content producers.

Pre-Roll Ads – In this format of advertising, the advertisement clip is inserted before the actual video and while playing the video, the advertisement clip is played first and the viewer is compelled to watch the advertisement before the start of the real video file.

Post-roll Video Ads: In post-roll ads, just like pre-roll, a 15 or 30 sec clip is streamed at the end of a video itself. This is usually launched in conjunction with pre-roll as well as often times, the advertiser never gets their ad seen as users most often only watch part of the video.

Mid-Roll Ads – This advertising format is where the clips are included in the middle of the videos so that the viewer goes through the video advertisement if he is curious enough to see the remaining part of the video, this format is also very popular with many of the video sites.

As stated earlier, due to the demand, many of these video websites have begun to test and offer new, innovative ad solution for video. One of these experimental format is the In-Player ad: With in-player ads the player skin itself can be used to place relevant images or text content for the advertiser so that the ad is displayed for the entire time that the video is played.

One of the most promising video advertisement formats is contextual advertising which attempts to match advertisements with the most relevant content and visa-versa. This ad itself can take of various different forms, in-video banners, lower-thirds, and contextual text overlay advertisements. The nice thing about this particular method is that it does not disturb the viewing of the video and it responds only when the viewer clicks on it.

Of all the various experiments with contextual video advertising, one format has taken off and has even become the standard video advertising format that YouTube and many other sites have adopted instead of pre-roll ads. This format is known as the Overlay ad and it is basically a contextually relevant text ad that is shown in a portion of the player and does not annoy users as much as in-stream advertising.

I have given you a brief overview of the most common formats of video ads that are being tested and utilized at the moment. That being said, with growth being what it is, and video discovery as new as it is, we will certainly see many different companies innovating in regards to developing new and exciting formats for online video advertising.

About the Author:

06

05 2009

Tips and Best Practices for Making Internet Video

You might be the greatest thing since sliced bread when it comes to lighting and framing. But if you’re no good at these preliminary things your online video quality may seriously suffer. That could mean less viewers, less revenue and less projects in the future. So check out these few quick things to help you get set before you say Quiet on the Set!

What is it? – Every good video starts with a good idea. But that good idea has to then be turned into a good script and good dialog (if you have any). It needs to be compelling and keep the viewer’s interest. But not only that, the story needs to go somewhere or the video has to be setup so that it leads the viewer into wanting to obtain further information, see further episodes or buy the product, whatever the goal of your video is. This can be accomplished with good pacing. An average person speaks 120-150 words per minute so if you are going to have someone speaking then a five-minute video would require around 600 to 750 words if it were one person speaking for the whole video.

Who’s on First? – That old Abbott and Costello bit still gets me even now. But it was all about placement and timing. Storyboarding is where you, as the creative talent behind your online video, get all your placement and timing hashed out before you get on set or location and start muddling about. This is where you can outline exactly what’s happening in every piece of the video. We’re not talking doing a second-by-second mock-up here but a general visual outline so you know exactly what route you want to take from point A to point B. Once you’ve got this and your script in hand you should have a pretty clear idea on where you are headed and how you’re getting there.

Ohhh, shiny! – You’ve got your footage, you followed your script, your storyboard showed you the way. Now what? Well of course you’ve got to edit together the pieces. But you’ve also got information that you need to communicate to your viewers. This could be as simple as an opening title or as complex as a full set of subtitles, closed captions and scene transitions and closing credits. Either way you have got to get URLs, email addresses and product names. Depending on if you’re selling a product, a service or a person that is.

These are just three simple things to take into account even before you step behind or in front of that video camera and yell Action! Done properly these initial foundations will give you a solid base from which to build your online video empire.

About the Author:

24

04 2009