Web Video is growing at a phenomenal rate, but there’s still one major problem to solve before the networks truly embrace and the whole venture becomes mainstream – money. Is doubling the amount of online video adverts the way to get past this issue?
Web Video Advertising
At the moment, most video-sharing sites will either have little to no advertising or a small amount of text-based adverts. The more professional outfits, namely Hulu, TV.com, and the individual network sites, tend to have single sponsors for each show, and one advert per break in the video.
This format is seen as a healthy compromise, allowing the companies involved to pay their bills but not annoying viewers to the point at which they give up watching. But some companies think they can now push that compromise slightly more.
ABC Upsetting The Balance
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Disney-ABC TV Group commissioned a survey from Nielsen Media Research into how much advertising a typical online video viewer would be happy with. The surprising result of the study found the majority of people wouldn’t mind the amount of ads for a full-length show being doubled on ABC.com.
What’s more, quadrupling the amount of brands being advertised in an episode from one to four was seen as a good thing for the advertisers involved.
Interesting Opportunity
Albert Cheng, executive vice president of digital media at DATG said:
“This presents an interesting opportunity for advertisers to really look at efficiencies and how we’re managing our inventory,”
“We can actually increase deliver, reach and frequency by looking at a model that will have more sponsors and more ads.”
Short-term Gain
Firstly, I’d like to know who the people surveyed were because from personal experience, I dislike any advertising embedded in Web video, despiting knowing how important it is for the show to even be on the Internet in the first place. So I certainly wouldn’t want to see the advertising doubled across the board.
I can see why ABC.com would want to do this, because it would bring revenue from online video up to a level more approaching that of traditional TV. In essence, it will be a short-term moneymaker for the company as it struggles to embrace the Web.
But what of the long-term effects?
Long-term Disaster
TiVo, Sky Plus, and the like, are making it possible for people to avoid or at least ignore the adverts on television these days. So you can’t then foist more ads on Web video viewers and expect them to sit there glued to their screens like gluttons for punishment.
Then there’s the danger of turning people on to BitTorrent trackers and P2P networks where these same viewers would be able to watch their favorite shows without any advertising breaks whatsoever. Surely it’s better to make some money and keep viewers happy than make more but risk losing those viewers forever.
