• by Kate Kaye , September 20, 2004

What will it take for advertisers to adopt online video as a component of their campaigns? More broadband content and further evaluation of ad effectiveness, at a minimum, said panelists at yesterday's "Lights, Camera, Interaction: Video and Rich Media" workshop at the Interactive Advertising World Conference in New York.

"Larger brands are now dedicating a significant amount of their budgets to testing," observes panelist Matt Straznitskas, partner, special services, at The Digital Edge/Outrider. He said his media agency works with cross-media research firm Dynamic Logic to assess the brand impact of most clients' campaigns. In addition to testing, The Digital Edge encourages advertiser clients to consider the Internet while filming ads for television.

In conjunction with Deep Focus, an Internet entertainment marketing agency, Dimension Films has gone one step further by developing and testing 15-second Web trailers for its horror flicks. Ian Schafer, president of Deep Focus, says he's seeing advertisers shoot commercials specifically for the Web right now. "It's just a matter of showing results," he stresses.

A rise in video advertising--particularly ads that run in-stream before or during video content--also depends upon both more video content and viewers. Without such increases, advertisers will not be able to justify the cost of running in-stream ads, whether filmed for the Web or not. Because it can cost more for a video ad to achieve the same reach as a television spot, said The Digital Edge's Straznitskas, agencies like his "face an uphill battle in terms of pricing."

Ensuring enough inventory is not problematic for everyone. Panelist David Cohn--World Wrestling Entertainment's director, integrated advertising sales--said the wrestling site WWE.com streams around 12 million to 14 million video clips each month, and is currently repurposing 70,000 hours' worth of WWE programming for the Web. "Our fans are video fanatics," he boasts.