From VentureBeat’s interview with Jeremy Allier, CEO of BrightCove.
How do you see online video ads changing in the next three to five years? Will we continue to see pre-roll and interstitial ads or more aggressive overlays like YouTube introduced this year?
When you look at online video advertising, marketers are just trying to re-use what worked offline. I think we’re going to see more hybrid video ads that offer experiences and ask users to engage. When ABC launched their catch-up TV services on ABC.com, they started introducing a really compelling format that used Flash to take-over the entire player environment with a rich, engaging and interactive marketing experience. In that kind of model, it is invitational, and the creative opportunities are pretty limitless. However, for media buyers, this is going to involve a lot more custom creative work, so it’s hard for such a format to gain scale.
Right now, pre-roll ads are so prevalent. You can measure it. There are no new assets required to produce them. But we think that as more hybrid experiences catch on, it will lead to standardization and economies of scale.
What are the biggest questions you’re asking yourself about online video at the moment?
There’s a big question as to whether meaningful, over-the-top distribution opportunities in video will emerge. What I mean by that is people are getting access to live, high quality, on-demand video without being dependent on traditional cable, satellite or telecom companies. There’s also convergence. There’s a sufficient volume of premium content coming online and speeds are high enough for HD streaming video. Media buyers are changing their behavior.
So the question is whether these new consumer products from Cisco, Microsoft and Apple that people are turning to instead of satellite and cable will be easily and openly connected to the Internet. Will they be as open as the web? And if that happens, there will be a huge amount of activity that gets funneled toward these outlets.
A second question for me is about measurement. Display and search marketing are incredibly measurement driven. Will there be the same kinds of metrics for video –
statistics that show whether video increases conversions, drives greater customer retention and loyalty, and by how much? We need to same rigor and science of measurement in digital video that we’ve seen from other areas of digital marketing.
Online video advertising is a wide open unsolved opportunity. One of the things that is surprising to me is that Google doesn’t have a preroll/interstitial ad solution for online videos. Such a solution should be part of its adsense program.