By looking holistically at the video ecosystem, more valuable and scalable video ad products can be created with the proper outlook.

In all the discussions, articles and keynotes about in-stream video advertising, speakers always talk about the size and rate of growth of the online video opportunity. Few presenters address the operational obstacles that must be overcome to build a scalable video ad product capable of managing thousands of successful video ad campaigns.
 
While I wholeheartedly agree with the estimates of the industry's prosperous future, I also know that publishers need to have a clear discussion about overcoming the major hurdles involved with streamlining the implementation and reporting of in-stream video advertising by creating robust video ad products.

Once the managers of publishing houses decide to "get on the video train" and start monetizing all their possible assets, their ad operations group needs to start asking a few questions:

What types of video content do we want to monetize? What content are we streaming? What viewing experience works best for the particular content we are delivering?

Once we know the answers to these preliminary questions and understand how each video is going to be viewed, then and only then, can we talk reasonably about the multitude of in-stream ad products that can go with each content type and play-back experience. 

Tiers of content
With the explosion of online video in the past 24 months, marketers have been bombarded with a wide selection of inventory. Content comes in all shapes, sizes and colors.  The major networks and the Hollywood studios provide the top-tier of professionally generated content. Established brands such as the Wine Spectator or Plum TV provide a second tier of content, still with high quality production values but more focused on niche interests. Some up-and-coming video blogs like WallStrip are expanding their reach with syndication over the web and may also fit into this group.

The third tier of content is editorially filtered amateur content that is selected to have contextual relevance to a particular audience. Online newspapers use video to lather additional stickiness to their websites. Sometimes these videos are of interest to only a small, hyper-local audience. For example, a local paper might publish one father's video of a high school football team's big win. Dad's clip then gets coupled with five other similar clips to create a local high school sports rundown on a sports section or social-networking page within the site.

The fourth tier of content includes unfiltered, user-generated content on sites like MySpace, Break.com, Metacafe, Bebo and Hi-5. While there are some hidden gems, which are widely-distributed, much of this content is either unfriendly or uninteresting for marketers. (Also, because this is a video article, I am obligated to reference YouTube when mentioning UGC.)

Viewing experiences
Once we have clarified the tiers of content that might be monetized, we can start to focus on the video playback experiences best suited to each content tier. To do that, publishers should consider a few basic experience categories that will drive ad product development and scalability. The two main questions here are: Is the video player embedded or will it pop up or spawn above the content? Are the assets going to be played individually or will they be playlisted together?

The embedded player is contained within the page and may or may not have additional graphical elements associated with it. Pop-up or spawning players can initiate from user interaction on a link or banner, or they can reside outside or above the site and present a video-centric experience. These custom pop-up players often utilize a larger framework so that additional elements can be viewed. These may include multiple playlists, companion banners, added value data-capture functionalities or sponsorship opportunities.

Another important consideration is choosing between a single-asset or multi-asset playback experience. Single-asset players present one video and then stop while multi-asset experiences contain playlisted videos and run through them until a user stops or closes the player. From an operations perspective, having the content type and playback experience understood helps tremendously in understanding what the proper (the most effective and least annoying) ad products to develop are.
Once we have the content types and playback experiences narrowed down, we are close to having a road map for developing ad products that complement the viewing experiences. This is when we can move towards refining the implementation processes so that it can be scalable.

Next: Video Ad Solutions