Greg Verdino, crayon
Our industry loves to fund studies that justify blind allegiance to the status quo, even though our own experiences clearly demonstrate that the same old things simply aren't as effective as they once were. For example, the research heads at broadcast networks continue to announce proprietary studies indicating that TV audiences really haven't changed much at all and that they do watch commercials, even though their DVRs empower them to fast-forward through them.
Really? I have a TiVo and almost never watch commercials; neither do any the other TiVo owners I know, and most of them aren't cynical industry pundits. But it's too easy to blame the media companies. Advertisers and agencies are willing co-conspirators. Why else would they lock-in billions of dollars in the television upfront, paying ever higher effective CPMs for increasingly ineffective placements that reach smaller audiences every year?
Which brings me to OPA's Online Video Advertising study; it really isn't much different from those TV studies. The findings seem to indicate that the interruptive 30-second pre-roll is an obvious "best practice," and yet it -- and mild variations of it (the only difference between a 15-second and a 30-second is a few seconds) -- was the only format tested.
The study tested pre-roll versus post-roll, 30 seconds versus 15 seconds and repurposed TV versus original for the web, but it ignored the many other video-based marketing options that can be easily supported with today's technologies.
Do publishers really need to prove to advertisers that they should be porting the familiar old interruption ad model to the web? They're already more than willing to make those buys, as evidenced by some major video portals' claims that their inventory is chronically oversold. I know; I've been there myself.
Today I work at a company founded by the author of "Life After the 30-Second Spot
", and from that perspective, my assessment of the OPA study shouldn't surprise you. But dig deeper into my background and you may be surprised. I led Arbitron's internet measurement practice back in the early days of internet radio. I understand how difficult it is to get even the savviest consumers to think about possibilities they've yet to encounter in the real world, and how easy it is to design surveys that will de facto validate the interests of your core constituents. More recently, I ran sales and marketing for a leading broadband video network that, at the time, represented more than 60 million pre-roll impressions.
I know that when pitching agencies on the promise of repurposed television, 30 seconds was our path of least resistance, all the while knowing exactly how much impact they had on our abandonment rates.
But you don't need to be an expert in online video analytics to question the validity of the OPA study's findings. It's easy to see that the survey poses the wrong questions.
My question then is: where's the study that helps marketers, agencies and media companies navigate a path to true innovation in online video? Where are the questions about branded content, the integration of product placements into online video and the use of next-generation video interactivity, including hotspots, overlays and telescoping? Where are the findings that justify the development of new video ad models that don't rely upon intercepting consumers when they just want to watch some content?
Maybe as an industry we're still afraid to ask those questions because the answers will force us to rethink the foundation of our business. That's a shame, because I'm convinced that they're the very questions we need to ask if we want to move our business forward.
