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RSSWe all know that the drive to video advertisement online is the result of video demand in general by consumers and the ability to watch it by almost everyone as a result of broadband penetration.
So, the onslaught of demand by marketers and advertisers alike has driven innovation surrounding the distribution of video advertisements of all types -- whether they are ads surrounding, laying over or inserted within user-generated content or content of interest to viewers, such as news. Video roll-open banner ads and stand-alone video advertisements created to show and tell more about products and services have also increased dramatically. Ad-serving technologies have abounded, ready to garner new business, since posting a video on a Web server just doesn't cut it. Video ad-serving technologies are a requirement to provide marketers with good output, assurance of consistency and tracking results.
And more innovation is coming now that ad-serving has reached a standard of expected performance that also offers metrics for quantifying campaign results. What are these new innovations? Well let's look at other key elements of the video ad that are outside of the distribution process and see what's cookin'...
The next area of innovation surrounds the creation of the video ad if mass adoption is ever to occur. The reason: It takes too long and costs too much to meet the market need or demand. Marketers probably do not believe it is possible to automate video ad editing, for they have long relied on a production team of highly skilled specialists to develop and produce TV commercials. But, just like film was the only medium for capturing movement not that long ago, manual editing of digital content by highly skilled labor will soon observe unskilled labor mass-assembling digital content using the tools of automation.
The need to innovate automation tools in the video ad editing space is driven by demand for video ads from every property on the Internet, yet few have discovered how to tackle the problem of mass adoption. One ad at a time is not scalable. There also isn't enough time to shoot footage, edit and post ads to the Web to meet demand. Therefore, low cost ad-assembly tools will be the next big innovation conceived for the Web, assembling pre-shot content, voice and audio effects. This video ad train is the only one enroute to meet the mass market demand for video ad content for distribution through all channels. With today's technological advances, ad-making is ready for a new paradigm -- one that drops costs, raises quality, and increases speed to market for all.
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Visible World provides the creative agency with story boarding tools to help visualize multiple versions and then create a “shot list� of elements to produce. In this way the creative agency can focus on just that, creativity, and produce easily creative treatments that adapt based on the target audience.
Trafficking the ads is handled by a standard JS tag which is dropped into the ad management system of the media buy in the same way that any other rich media campaign is delivered. The company also recently announced their integration with DoubleClick, another significant step in getting this type of ad creation widely adopted by existing advertisers. Ad requests to the Visible World system are handled in real-time and can be targeted based on a dozen parameters from ZIP code geo targeting, through demographics to local weather. The real-time assembler chooses the best fit creative message for each ad request and serves that back to the requesting ad unit.
While self help creative tools and modest versioning will become more common place and serve a certain market, main stream advertisers and their respective agencies will look to differentiate their creative messaging while enjoying the freedom to produce highly targeted messages based on information they have about increasingly smaller audiences and manage their campaigns through existing processes and tools.
I agree getting the creative buy-in will be the tough part.
On another topic, once again we see specialty talents (video editing, camera ops) on the fast train towards becoming commodities. But if this video ad is to happen this automation definitely needs to occur!
JB
A while back someone forwarded me a help-wanted ad ; Nimblefish in San Francisco was looking for a creative team to do just this, create assets for instant on-the-fly video assembly. There's also a company in New York, Visible World, that's been offering this technology for on-the-fly television commercials for a few years.
The challenge is always going to be getting creative buy-in. None of this stuff (initially at least) will look like a Ridley Scott production. You're basically trading off artistry and quality for targeting and relevance. But I would imagine that if creatives are willing to build their "video templates" around editing techniques that the the technology does well, the dynamic assembly of the spot will be invisible to viewers.
Direct mailers used to dream of a million unique letters for a million unique customers. That's long since been realized. Now imagine a million unique videos... The applications are endless.