• by Andrew Ettinger , August 3, 2009

At the June OMMA video conference, I was shocked to hear esteemed panelists say "Pre-Roll sucks." This could not be farther from the truth. Some Industry insiders mistakenly believe that Pre-Roll will go the way of the Dodo. "This is just a phase," they mutter to themselves as they rock themselves gently to sleep. Believe me, this is not just a phase. Pre-Roll does not suck. Pre-Roll rocks because video is abundant, cheap to make and engages consumers.

Pre-Roll is here to stay because TV still dominates advertising. Consumers still have a love affair with television. According to Nielsen, time spent watching TV continues to rise. The TV marketplace dwarfs online. According to eMarketer, online spending accounts for 12% of total advertising spending. Of the $25 billion dollars spent online, half goes to search. Less than one-third supports display and only 5% to online video. On the other hand, TV expenditures account for $67 billion per annum. Thus, it makes sense for advertisers to leverage existing conditions- consumers' love for TV and the availability of online video. Even far into the future there will remain a plethora of available TV commercials to be re-used online. Advances in production technology has made video cheaper and easier to make than ever. Even at the local level, any decent sized business can make a TV commercial. By comparison banners require much more work and forethought. At the very least, an advertiser needs a decent website. Online media is the most difficult of all media to create and traffic, a certain level of technical knowledge is required. Because video is omnipresent, and banner ads are not, there will be a continued reliance on repurposing video online.

Pre-Roll is criticized for being intrusive. I disagree. Traditional TV breaks that are three and a half minutes with seven commercials are intrusive. By comparison, one thirty second (or less) ad is reasonable. To consumers, Pre-Roll is a fair exchange for accessing free online content.

According to Doubleclick, the average in-stream ad garners a 0.71% CTR. In my experience, Pre-Roll earns much higher than that. Further, Doubleclick reports that display Flash advertising typically earns a 0.11% CTR. Without a doubt, Pre-Roll earns clicks. I think clicks are important, until we have a better metric (which I don't think will happen anytime soon) clicks are important. Getting consumers to engage with a brand on a website is surefire method to producing sales. In terms of purchase intent and brand favorability, studies from Pointroll, Pew and Dynamic Logic all say the same thing -- video works.

Lastly, critics contend that Pre-Roll, by its very nature, is too traditional. The web intelligentsia argue that Pre-Roll is not sharable or dynamic. I say, big deal. Not every digital ad needs to be interactive. Let's not confuse the message with the medium. Usually when people talk about dynamic content they offer movies, cars or soft drinks as examples. Oddly, they never mention ads for toilet bowl cleaners, bug spray or headlights. Consumer packaged goods don't merit the same attention from the digerati as "cool" products, yet they account for a much larger portion of the economy. An ad does not necessarily have to be sharable to be effective. Some products are ripe for ads that you want to share, others are not. However that should not qualify what makes advertising effective. Good advertising only needs to lift motivate consumption.

The problems with pre-roll have nothing to do with the format itself and everything to do with how publishers implement it. First, publisher's need to frequency cap advertising. Like they do on TV, publishers repeat the same commercial ad nauseum. Publishers should cap exposures to a daily frequency level. This is reasonable and healthier for the medium. Second, publishers insufficiently track the number of exposures. They do not spend enough effort tracking how long people actually watched the ad. They count the initial tag firing but little else. They need to measure video completion rates to make pre-roll more advertiser friendly.

Lastly, publishers need to require that consumers log in prior to watching videos. Using basic personally identifiable information (age and sex) log-in information would make online video more targeted. This would mean better advertising opportunities for marketers, more relevant advertising for consumers and ultimately more money for publishers. Publishers should target advertising to people based on their real characteristics rather than Nielsen estimates. As a 37 year old male, there is no reason why I should be served ads for Pampers or Kotex. When someone serves me such ads they are literally throwing away their money.

Viva La Pre-Roll!