Definitions of Online Video Advertising Formats and Methods

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.

Since video sites have been realizing more and more traffic growth, they have had a unique opportunity to innovate and test various different online
video ad formats. And the advertisers as well are more than happy to experiment as they are looking to these leaders to develop the most effective
online video advertising formats. Traditionally, pre-roll, mid-roll, or post-roll ad formats (aka in-stream ads) have been favored by advertisers due to
the availability of inventory and prominence of the advertisement itself.
Pre-Roll Format - Ads, typically videos in duration of 15 or 30 seconds are streamed before the video itself plays. This make the advertising incredibly
prominent but causes plenty of issues with regard to user friendliness and many studies show this format to be unpopular with users.
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 Video Ads: Again, like the other in-stream ads, mid-roll streams a short video clip within the video player itself, only with mid-stream, the ad
gets played in the middle of the video almost like a normal TV commercial. This seems to be somewhat less offensive to users.
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.
The buzz in the past year has been with regard to a newer method of video ad delivery that attempts to match relevance by choosing video ads to run
with only video that is similar in subject. This is known as contextual video advertising and it can take on a range of different formats with images or
text being displayed within a portion of the video window, only being activated when clicked on.
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.
Although there are a few other formats that are being tested and utilized, the formats that I covered are the most commonly used formats at the
moment. That being said, with the attention on this sector as it is, we will likely continue to see rapid innovation and will keep our eye out for the next
best online video ad format.

About the Author
This post was written by Mark Robertson, an expert in search engine marketing and internet video marketing. For more information, tips, and news for
online video advertising , visit ReelSEO.
Source: http://www.ezine-article-exchange.com