Video advertising sets its sights on the web

Both Twitter and Flipboard, two networks that until now have been characterized by user-considerate advertising, have announced that they are to begin running video ads.

These are both tools that have developed steadily and are enjoying sustained growth among hundreds of millions of users worldwide, and that logically face increased costs in providing their service, as a result of which they need to find new revenue streams.

The question here is whether their respective formats are compatible with video advertising, which requires that content consumption be subjected to a certain degree of exclusivity. Video advertising tends to be associated with passive and uni-directional media: we are accustomed to television content being interrupted by advertising, but we consume content differently on the web, because we are active users. Video advertising works, or is accepted, although not always willingly, on pages with specific types of content, such as YouTube, but tends to prompt rejection when associated with other types of content. Surveys show that the majority of us find pre-activated video advertisements or those that are set in motion by moving the cursor over them annoying and intrusive.

Introducing video into a Twitter timeline might not provide a great experience for the user, who is used to controlling what he or she sees on it. The sponsored formats used so far are static and released carefully so as to avoid overwhelming the user, and this would probably have to be even more carefully handled in the case of video. Twitter’s decision to go for static video, allowing the user to activate it on if so desired, and only to charge the advertiser for the amount of time the user activates the video, seems like a reasonable approach. I doubt that many Twitter users would be happy with moving image and sound advertisements jamming up their timeline.

In the case of Flipboard, the matter is even more complicated: this is a presentation format based on magazines, and the full-page advertisement format fitted that perfectly and was not intrusive.

Flipboard has opted for pre-activated videos, but has so far provided no further information.

There are many challenges associated with video advertising on the web. The decision to go for a pre-activated model seems simple enough, but is far from being so, because going from a high number of reproductions to a more restricted use, limited to those who choose to press the Play button is a big obstacle to monetizing the process; similarly, for a company with millions of users, the idea of “imposing” an advertisement introduces many new multipliers, and to a schematic similar to that of television: interrupting the content you have chosen to consume with content that you don’t want to consume, but that finances the former. But a voluntary model more acceptable to users significantly reduces the number of people who will see the content with low conversion figures.

At the same time, increased bandwidth consumption could be an issue, particularly for smartphones. How might we respond to these kinds of stimuli? Would we press Play on our smartphones and tablets to voluntarily watch advertisements because we may not get a second chance to watch them? Would we only do so when in a WiFi environment so as to avoid using our monthly quota of bits? Will advertising become a social object, subject to the FOMO factor, fear of missing out, and that will make us want to see a given video so we can talk about it with our friends? Everything suggests that copying television advertising based on reaching a mass audience at certain times of day would be a mistake that could kill the format; at the same time, I have my doubts about whether advertisers and agencies will be able to adapt and come up with new ideas.

It now seems pretty clear that we have reached the tipping point where the web will become more and more like television. This could work, but it will have to be done well, avoiding many of the mistakes of the past. To be honest, bearing in mind the pressures and conditionings on both advertisers and publishers, I’m not sure I’m going to like it.

(En español, aquí)