Video ads on the Internet will increase this year while pop-up ads will drop, according to a study conducted by online ad agency Avenue A/Razorfish.
"I would not be surprised if every one of the Internet portals has video as one of their top two focuses in 2005," Avenue A/Razorfish vice president Jeff Lanctot said about the study. “I think they all see it long-term as a way to grow their business."
The report said last year consumers began “truly embrac[ing] video on the Web” and this year advertisers would follow suit.
“In fact, many advertisers have already seen the important role video can play in their advertising campaigns,” the report continued. “Most remain in a testing phase, so considerations like price, duration, standard formats, tracking and reporting are still very much in flux.”
Avenue A/Razorfish said ad dollars online were likeliest to be spent on video ads within existing, on-page ad units; user video content requests showing ads within that content; and, transitional video ads shown between pages, where video commercials are shown before the requested page comes up.
And the next big forward push concerning online video, Avenue A/Razorfish said, could well enough be video search developments.
“Companies like Yahoo!, AOL’s Singingfishand Blinkx are making it easier for consumers to find relevant videos very quickly,” the report continued. “Yahoo!, in particular, has championed the use of metadata in video to identify clips by topic, actor, file type or many other criteria. This will help consumers make sense of the vast, but sometimes elusive, store of video available online. Googlehas made no secret of their desire to move into video search, both on the PC and in the living room; there’s no doubt they’ll play an important role in each area.”
