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When Google announced its intentions to become a universal search engine in 2007, the very first step it took was to index all videos in the web. It seems, the web giant had predicted that video would be the pick of the world in search among all sources. Suranga Chandratillake took the same initiative when he started his video search website, Blinkx, which has today become the world’s largest single index of rich media content on the web and probably the best video search engine. Senior Analysts in eMarketer say that online video content is on a clear upward trajectory. The demographic range of the viewing population is expanding and the content mix is evolving from short, snack-type clips to long-form content such as TV shows and feature films.
The dominance of video has also made the web a great place for video advertisements. There are different advertising methods that are in existence. Let us explore them briefly.
Video Ad Methods
1. In Stream Video Ads - The advertisement appears in the bottom or top of the video player when the video is streaming. Here is a sample.
In this sample, the advertisement is displayed on the top as the video streams.
2. With Video Ads - Pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll ads constitute this method. The advertisements appear before, in the middle and after the streaming of the video respectively.
The sample below shows the advertisement being played in the entire section of the video player.
3. Around Video Ads - This advertisement comes in video oriented sites in a variety of ad formats including standard text ads and image ads.
In the above sample, the publisher website Hulu has customized the surrounding areas of the video player for the advertisement that plays within the player.
Video Ad Production
Gone are the days when companies had to invest huge amount of money and time for video advertisements. Similar to the DIY (Do It Yourself) website creation tools, today we have DIY video ad creation tools. And these packages start from as low as $500. Few web companies provide huge database of already prepared advertising videos from which the customer can choose and customize.
There are also on-location ad production companies who come to the spot, shoot the video and do the customization. These methods are however complicated when compared with the DIY methods which specialize mostly in creating montages.
Video ads are short. The very lengthy ones could span to 60 seconds and they are very rarely made. Most of the ads are 15 to 30 seconds long.
Video Ad Distribution
When we think about video, the first picture that comes to our mind is television. So can we bring our web made advertisement into TV? If you have that question, the answer is yes. There are companies that function exclusively for this. The platform which they provide enables a customer to create a video ad, bid for TV spots and schedule airing time. Spotrunner was the company to pioneer this service. Soon to compete with them was Google. Now we have many companies which offer a similar platform and they distribute the video ad not only in TV but also in online TVs like Hulu, Veoh and various ad networks like YuMe, ScanScout and Right Media.
Video ads are also distributed in online advertising campaigns, business directory listings, Internet yellow pages, local search directories, online newspapers, video sharing sites, social networks, eCommerce sites, etc.
Are you a business owner finding difficulty in locating customers for your service? Maybe it’s time to invest in video ads.
Tags: Ad Methods, Advertising, Blinkx, Distribution, eMarketer, Google, Production, Video
