• The Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, June 4, 2008 10:45 AM

CBS and other players in the online video space are experimenting with a series of new video ad formats, called bugs, tickers and skin. "Skin" ads appear in an image surrounding the video player window and will be the primary ad format for CBS' latest addition, "The Burly Sports Show", which is produced by Heavy and will appear on CBSSports.com. "Bugs" are logos that appear in text or graphics on or next to a video, and "tickers" are horizontal bars that usually run at the bottom of a video.

This is just the beginning of building a foundation for these promising new video ad types. Ad execs are still trying to figure out pricing, as different publishers use different formulas to come up with their rates. Effectiveness also needs to be measured by a neutral third party.

"How do you really measure how successful it is? That's the gap that has to be closed with video," said Sean Muzzy, senior partner and media director at Neo@Ogilvy, a digital-ad agency owned by WPP Group's Ogilvy and Mather. While advertisers would prefer to see one video ad type emerge as the dominant format, they are more likely to use the formats in conjunction with one another.

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