• by June 15, 2007

While more contextually targeted forms of online video advertising--including tickers, in-screen and bumpers--wait for their turn to shine, the already "traditional" online format of pre-roll is suffering from too few advertisers buying up lots and lots of inventory.

That was the message conveyed by Ari Paparo, vice president of rich media at DoubleClick, who spoke on the Promax's "Future of Online Advertising" panel yesterday. "Only 20 advertisers are doing in-stream," Paparo said--and, ironically for an ad format that closely mimics traditional TV spots, they're the CPG companies, auto and finance companies that are "running away from television...They're buying whatever inventory they can."

Paparo was responding to a question by panel moderator Will Richmond, the president and founder of Broadband Directions, who wondered why, although he receives other Internet ads targeted directly to him, he keeps seeing pre-rolls for tampons.

Eric Druckenmiller, media director for digital agency Deep Focus, added that "a lot of in-stream advertising is being bought by larger CPGs without much thought if they're reaching the right audience."

Fred McIntyre, senior vice president of AOL Video, noted just how many videos are now on the Internet compared to when AOL started to run pre-rolls just two-and-a-half years ago--in 2006, 2 million videos, now 20 million, and by the end of the year, an estimated 50 millions. McIntyre added that AOL's video search engine, which is free to all takers, now has 40 million unique users.

Paparo pointed out the difficulty of buying video properties that may be available through five or six portals: "If I want to reach the 'Lost' audience, I may need to make six different deals, with six different creatives."

A similar media buying dilemma on a much larger scale was expressed earlier in the day on another Promax panel by Aaron Cohen, executive vice president of Horizon Media, who said that his agency had seen presentations from 94 cable networks, five broadcast networks and seven syndication companies-not to mention print and radio companies--each of which had a "wheel" offering myriad opportunities across multiple platforms.

What do we do with 100-plus wheels?" Cohen asked, pointing out the complexities of both buying and measuring. In order to cope with media companies that are offering multiplatform opportunities, he said, media companies need to implement "total integration of online people with traditional media buyers....From our perspective, we need a wheel."