Commentary

The Next Video Innovation: Ad Assembly Automation

Online video sparks excitement in the minds of marketers clamoring to participate in some form or fashion. Why? Because, the mantra heard at all marketing/advertising tradeshows over the last 18 months has been: "A huge move to video is coming and if you don't get onboard, you'll miss the train!" As a result, marketers have developed interactive departments in droves, and everyone is getting up to speed quickly with how to incorporate online video advertising in their overall ad mix.

We all know that the drive to video advertisement online is the result of video demand in general by consumers -- and broadband penetration, which has given almost everyone the ability to view video.

So, the onslaught of demand by marketers and advertisers alike has driven innovation surrounding the distribution of video advertisements of all types whether they are ads surrounding, laying over or inserted within user-generated content or content of interest to viewers, such as news. The number of video roll-open banner ads and stand-alone video advertisements created to show and tell more about products and services has also increased dramatically. Ad-serving technologies have abounded, ready to garner new business -- since posting a video on a Web server just doesn't cut it. Video ad-serving technologies are a requirement to provide marketers with good output, assurance of consistency and tracking results.

And more innovation is coming now that ad-serving has reached a standard of expected performance that also offers metrics for quantifying campaign results. What are these new innovations? Well, let's look at other key elements of the video ad that are outside of the distribution process and see what's cookin'!

The next area of innovation surrounds the creation of the video ad if mass adoption is ever to occur. The reason: It takes too long and costs too much to meet the market need or demand. Marketers probably do not believe it is possible to automate video ad editing, for they have long relied on a production team of highly skilled specialists to develop and produce commercials. But, just like film was the only medium for capturing movement not that long ago, manual editing of digital content by highly skilled labor will soon evolve into unskilled labor mass-assembling digital content using the tools of automation.

The need to innovate automation tools in the video ad editing space is driven by demand for video ads from every property on the Internet, yet few have discovered how to tackle the problem of mass adoption. One ad at a time is not scalable. There also isn't enough time to shoot footage, edit and post ads to the Web to meet demand. Therefore, low cost ad-assembly tools will be the next big innovation conceived for the Web, assembling pre-shot content, voice and audio effects. This video ad train will meet the mass market demand for video ad content for distribution through all channels. With today's technological advances, ad-making is ready for a new paradigm -- one that drops costs, raises quality, and increases speed to market for all.

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