Great thoughts. I'll give you a developer's perspective about ads being dynamically inserted "inline" with audio and video files. And this goes to the heart of the whole New Media movement, which is about empowering people to connect around content, and making that content as accessible and usable as possible - not just for content creators, but consumers as well. In my opinion, participating in these ad insertion programs can limit the greater potential uses of such content.
I'm a part of a technology development over at CrowdAbout.us. In a nutshell, we have developed a contextual commenting system, which allows for communities of people to have blog-like discussions centered around online multimedia, by making posts and comments at specific points along the timeline of the files being discussed. It's pretty cool stuff, if I do say so myself, but we are facing problems with these dynamic ad insertions. I'll explain. These dynamic ads are not standardized, and often change monthly (or even per download) on an ad rotation schedule devised by the advertising system. So one ad might run :20, another is :35. No big deal, really, unless someone wants to have a time-based conversation in our player, or make time-based annotations or chapter markers in another service. Suddenly, the difference of two or three seconds in a media source can wreak havoc and render useless the meta-services atempting to be used. We've had pleasant conversations with pleasant people at some of these respectable ad insertion companies. We have kicked around different ideas about how to overcome these issues (standardizing the time that ads are placed in content, and the ad length itself, if also time-based; special encoding that would help our system detect the ad and ignore it for the purposes of the timeline we use) but in the end, all the solutions mean that if we get around the ads, then it won't be long before everyone gets around them, and if that happens, they're out of business. So we have to explain to lots of content creators that their content isn't displaying in sync with their posts and annotations because the timestamp of the file they used last week is different from the dynamically served, ad-injected file that is being served up this week. (this is mostly happening with audio podcasts right now, but it's coming to video) If the goal of social media is to make content as accessible as possible in as many different contexts as possible, and available to as many people as possible, the case could be made that advertising often stands in direct opposition to the spirit of that cause. We could be going for a few quick bucks while making conversations that could lead to the bigger opportunities impossible. --- In [email protected], "Enric" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I've put up a post on my Lucid Media blog that may be of interest > here. It is the rational for not placing ads within videos: > > http://tinyurl.com/37s2ma > or > http://lucidmedia.cirne.com/index.php/2007/03/02/the-case-against-advertising-in-net-video/ > > Blog text follows: > ================== > Recently methods of advertising in video have become active in > development and implementation. Originally when I heard the rational > for Ads in net videos from Revver, I thought it worthwhile. Provide a > method for people making video on the net to gain revenue from their > work. This would support net videomakers continuing their work. There > had been entries on the yahoo videoblogging group and on blogs for Ads > targeted to the audience and content of the video. Similar to Google > showing Ads that try to relate to keyword searches; an Ad for Harley > motorcycles could appear on a videoblog entry about a weekend > motorcycle hog excursion with friends. > > Unfortunately, specifying include an Ad in my video on Revver, blip.tv > and others means you can have a powerful, emotive video on the > relationship to one's father followed by a upbeat commercial for Juicy > Fruit gum. Or a irreverent video of doing a prank on someone followed > by a commercial for the Heart Association. Now this problem probably > just relates to the technicality of specifying categories for the Ad's > relationships to video content and the amount of different Ads > available. With time the correlation of Ads to video content and the > viewership should have stronger matching. > > The question is why have Ads in videos on distributed networks. > Traditionally, on a television set broadcast a advertisement had to > exist within the video stream. No other location was provided for > placement. However on the internet an Ad does not need to be in the > video. It can be anywhere around the video on the web page. Either > top, left, right, bottom or lower down the page. Now video on the net > does not mean just a web page. It can be an iPod, mobile phone, Tivo, > or even projected in a theatre film festival. All of these non-website > screens can and probably will develop methods of displaying more than > just a video stream. A future iPod, mobile phone, digital TV and > theatre projector will be able to show more than just the video. Like > the Opera super- and sub-titles projected separately from the > performance, these screens will probably eventually have dynamic > separate information areas where Ads can appear. Further with the > usage of different screen ratios than 4x3 (16x9, etc.), space can be > made available around the video to place Ads. This puts advertising in > the video stream, but does not directly break up the video continuity. > > Google proved the failure of putting ads directly in searches. Flash > Ads that pop-up and dance up over the content of web-pages send people > away from sites. And Ads that interrupt the video, even at the end, > will be found to be ineffective. They will either drive people away > from watching the videos if at the start or middle or tend to not be > watched if at the end. Ads placed around the video will work since > people can choose to pay attention to the periphery of a video if the > ad relates to their interest or ignore that area. > ================== > > -- Enric > -======- > http://www.cirne.com >
