In-Video

Have you ever gone to a site, say maybe CNN.com or maybe heavy.com, there you were offered an interesting video link. Something like Chocolate Rain perhaps, however, to your horror, upon clicking said link you are forwarded, not to a singing black guy, but to a silly car commercial. If this has ever happened to you (and if you have ever spent more than five minutes on the internet it probably has) then you have fallen victim to an in-video advertisement.

Now don't get me wrong on this. I'm not saying that in-video ads are bad, no in fact there are many that I quite enjoy, however, like every other form of advertising it must be used intelligently. I cannot remember how many times I was forced to watch the 30 second TV spot for Norbit. To give you some idea of what it was like click the link on Norbit and watch the video...33 times...in a row. Now if you survived that experience you may have some idea of how awful it can be.

That being said there are plenty of intelligent applications and interesting. For one, it is extremely cost effective. For only a fraction of the cost of television advertising, you can tell exactly how many people saw your ad, when they saw it, heck you can even tell what else they were doing at the time. Additionally, if you do your research well, you can make sure that your video only plays for your audience.

Already both Google and Youtube are working on integrating in-video advertisments. How will this affect online video? we will have to wait and see.