Gannett Co.’s PointRoll today announced some newbies for its in-stream suite of products, with some interesting opportunities to turn a regular batch of pre-roll into an interactive campaign, using tools the marketer or advertises chooses themselves to give customers the ability to hop over to your social media sites. In the Point Roll plan your standard pre-roll can be imbedded with logos for Facebook and Google and Pinterest and other social sites, and with a simple touch those consumers can transported themselves to the company pages on those sites. I like this second idea better; it sounds like a no brainer, which are ideas that get that name either because they miracuously deserve it or because the company deludes itself. (Either way it works out, the drama is pretty interesting) . This one from Point Roll puts a clickable branding logo in the corner of the pre-roll, allowing a customer to watch the ad and go directly to the brand Web site. In my imaginary world, the buyer you send to that site sees a pertinent bundle of persuasive ancillary data and flattering product specifications. And that person is not seeing competitive nay-sayers on some consumer watchdog site. Suddenly, the person interested in solar paneling is getting detail on energy savings, government tax credits and efficiency just by clicking on your beckoning logo in the pre-roll. In my real life, when I see a product or brand that seems impressive I’m skeptical, and I’m off to Googleland to get the lowdown from some source that is, as often as not, hostile, naive or misinterpreting info. A brand video that controls a consumer’s browsing by directly him away from potentially hostile sites and reviews takes a huge leap up, at least from their standpoint. (To some degree, all solutions for businesses have to adopt a caveat emptor attitude.) The thing that is hard to understand is why consumers don’t dive deeper into Google/Yahoo/andYouTube universe on their own before getting sold a bill of goods. Peer-to-peer infomation seem so to be good for most consumers but good for only some of the brands that are being evaluated. User-generated reviews can kill a product, a restaurant, a movie. The final new PointRoll offering seems weakest. AdChooser allows the viewer to chose from four pre-roll videos ads before they get to the video they actually came from. And then, after that ad, it gives viewers the “opportunity" to see the other messages, or watch the same one again. Assuming you’re at the site to a watch a entertainment/news or sports program, choosing from among four messages you didn’t want to see it all seems like the kind of offer a consumer can happily refuse. But I may be all wet on this. Engaging ads built up good will, and drive sales. That’s the word, and it’s true to an extent, obviously. But frankly, I think for many of the ads out there, advertisers and marketer are kidding themselves. pjbednarski@comcast.net