Ad standards starting to work for online video; social media next? August 19, 2008
Posted by jeremyliew in advertising, social media, social networks, video.trackback
For a long time I’ve been calling for standards in social media advertising. Today if an advertiser wants to make a social media buy across multiple social sites, they will need to build different creative for each of the different social media advertising products on each of the major companies, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Rockyou, Slide etc.
Until recently, online video has faced the same problem. But in May the IAB approved new online video advertising standards.
Two studies have shown a positive impact from the establishment of the standards. Reports Wired:
Riddled with inconsistencies, video advertising has been a difficult marketplace to tap into. Advertisers are often forced to tailor creative for each video ad purchase, which is a big turnoff to advertisers looking to make big buys. Meanwhile, long, poorly formatted ads lead to a high rate of attrition by alienating viewers.
In May, the Interactive Advertising Bureau implemented standards to help streamline video advertising. Today, Break Media, an entertainment community for men, and Panache, a video advertising delivery-platform, released a study showing high rates of success with video ads since the standards went into effect.
Over an 11-week period, the study tested the success of the four standard formats for in-stream video advertising established by the Interactive Advertising Bureau: pre-roll, interactive pre-roll, non-overlay ads and overlay ads. Tracking advertisements for three large corporations — Honda, T-Mobile, and truTV — the study found that viewers had a high tolerance for pre-roll and overlay ads.
All of the four formats had extremely high click through rates. Completion rates for 15-second pre-roll ads were 87 percent, and 77 percent viewed videos with overlay ads for at least 15 seconds.
“Getting major advertisers major advertisers to move and turn into video advertising is going to take time,” says Panache CEO Steve Robinson. But he is enthusiastic about the new standards: “now you can just do the creative and know that it works.”
NewTeeVee notes another positive study:
Meanwhile, in a study of 100 campaigns and nearly 65 million impressions, Tremor Media measured 80 percent completion rates for both 15- and 30-second pre-roll ads. While the study’s size makes it more significant, Tremor did not look at click-through rates. Tremor said it actually saw slightly higher completion rates for 30-second ads than 15-second ones, attributing viewer willingness to watch longer ads to their placement next to high-quality content.
For Social Media to be a business we’ll need to see similar standards for social media advertising. This is why I think AOL buying Bebo is good for the industry. With AOL joining Fox as major media companies with a “dog in the fight”, hopefully we’ll move more quickly towards standards for social media advertising.
Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog 
The advertising profession is out of control. You people need to wake up to the fact that the rest of us are fed up with advertising!! I left televison years ago because ads became so pervasive, in-my-face, and just insulting! It’s simply discusting propaganda, and my time is too valuable to be punished that way.
Now, advertisers are following people like me to the online world. Did you learn anything about why we left the other places?? No! You’re doing the same out of control crap online, even worse with more technology to abuse!!
If you want to ad “standards” to advertising (somehow I don’t see those two words going together..but I’m willing to entertain it..) how about starting with quality! Then learn restraint! Self-control! ALl the things your grandmother tried to teach you!
Hungry advertisers and especially “professionals” in the advertising industry with lust for more and more business, have all lost your collective souls! Instead of addressing the real problem, you all sit around conference room tables and scheme upclever deceptive and inhumane ways to shuv it down our throats! Stop that!
I think if you want to set standards, START with these guidlines:
#1 Do not force viewers to watch more than 10% of their program with ads!
#2 Make the advertising high-quality! Instead of a bunch of irritating repetitive song and dance nonesense, how about telling us something, ANYTHING factual about the product! Stop the propaganda!
#3 NEVER repeat the same commercial(s) over, and over, and over again and again and again and again!!
#4 STOP increasing the volume on ads over the program, and other such trickery, such as clipping the mid-high frequency spectrum on programs and blasting it on ads.. The FCC used to have a ban on this, and you still do it! This is Soooo irritating that I have to use the mute button for every ad!
#5 STOP modifying my equipment, disabling mute buttons, making them hard to find! Disabling skip features..
While there may be some measurable improvement in your ad effectiveness when you apply these abusive tactics, what you will not accept is IT PISSES MOST OF US OFF to no end. Your serveys are not accurate becaus emost of us hate serveys too! It only helps you!
Is that any way to do buysiness? You really want my money?
I remember television in the 70’s. Ads were annoying.. but somewhat tollerable compared to today! The reason is, advertising professionals had common sense not to punish their audience the way you do now! Today we are simply oversaturated with it, and there are so many irritating clever ways to force it on us. I’m amazed you stay in business!
The first standard that needs to be applied is to control the overall saturation! Get that ad out of the blasted urinals! Stop calling me at home! Stop calling my cellphone! If I want to relax in my home after a long week, and watch a movie without ads, don’t put it on my DVD’s! I paid money for the DVD, whether I buy it or rent it!! Why do I have to get ads then!? Because advertisers WANT MORE.
And most of all.. STOP INSTALLING YOUR CRAP IN MY COMPUTERS! It’s not your computer! It’s mine! You are stealing my disk space! Stealing my time! My time is money too! I have to spend time and money for tools to clean your crap out of my computers. We are sick of this.
Advertisers are OUT OF CONTROL, and you all need to cut it out.. or .. as you are seeing WE WILL! I’m an electronics/software engineer. No matter what schemes you people invent, we will always get around it! Why? The simple fact remains, Nobody will tollerate the behavior I have outlined to you! If I cannot skip ads, I simply do not watch the program! Like the TV, I turn it off!
All for the better anyway!
[…] could be the first move towards a new standard for social media advertising. As I said previously: The thing that differentiates social media sites from other forms of online […]
[…] exciting development and likely will be a great catalyst to help boost the online video market. The IAB put out their online video standards in August and the Pool is further momentum towards the standards that will drive this market forward. […]