Online video advertising faces many challenges, including standards and how such standards inform conversations with advertisers and marketers, said Rebecca Paoletti, the director of video strategy at Yahoo!
She spoke with Andy last week at the OMMA conference during Advertising Week.
“Everyone is trying to do something creative and think out of the box and every time we get far on a standard someone does a cool interactive thing around social or mobile and then we go back to ‘do we need a new standard?'” she explained. But, that’s a good position to be in because one of the Web’s advantages is in the range of ad units and creative types available for marketers, she added.
Yahoo!, for one, offers pre-rolls, sponsored programs, branded entertainment, product placement, bumpera, in-banner video, overlays and other type of rich media, she said.
Video ad standards were set last year by the IAB.
Online advertisers can buy based on a variety of metrics like click-through, completion, engagement or brand lift. That can be challenging though when talking to TV buyers who are still accustomed to the simplicity of buying on TV.
“We deal with CPC and CPA and can go beyond the pre-roll…where they sometimes just want to buy against reach,” she said. That’s why Yahoo, and others, are working to develop standards for online video buying that can help advertisers evaluate Web buys in the same way they do TV.
Mindshare, for instance, has developed a GRP system with video ad network YuMe to compare online video buys to TV. Paoletti added that she is a big believer in mobile and expects it to become a significant ad vehicle.While Yahoo! has far fewer video views than Google’s YouTube, much of
Yahoo’s content has associated advertising. Video is a cornerstone for
Yahoo!, CEO Carol Bartz told us last week.
Daisy Whitney, Senior Producer
