• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, March 21, 2007

Video spots just got a bit of good news. According to new research from DoubleClick, 8% of Web surfers are interacting with video ads. The interaction rate is the "all in" metric, including the sum total of all interactions that people have with video ad units.

Included in the units: mouse-overs, expansions and interactions with the video control buttons, clicks and other events. Such interactions are then divided by the total impressions served.

DoubleClick also found that the video control consumers are most likely to click is the "Play" button. At 0.32%, consumers are roughly twice as likely to play an online video ad unit as they are to click through on a standard JPG or GIF ad.

In addition, when judged on the click-through rate--online video ads perform extremely well. Online video ads experience click-through rates ranging from 0.4% to 0.74%, depending on the online video format. By comparison, the click-through rate for plain GIF or JPG image ads ranges between 0.1% and 0.2%, based on DoubleClick data.