Online video advertising comes in all shapes and sizes and, as marketers and advertisers have dreamed of for many many years, it is a field where creativity is not that limited to time slots and tariffs. It is a field in which those inspired can put their imagination to good use and get viewer engagement out of it.
Pre-roll ads are one option and it is possibly the online video format most used.
These are the ads that stream before the online video content viewers enter a website or click a link to watch. In most cases, in order to benefit from free viewing of that said content, users need to sit through the ad that preceeds it.
Highly similar to TV commercials, the pre-roll ads were the most obvious transition from a commercial-free virtual space to one that has started selling products and reaching consumers better. In a way, this parallel between the TV space and the Internet space was more easily digested by the online users when the first commercials appeared before the chosen content. They were the introduction to what online video advertising has come to mean.
However, since online video advertising should be a more palpable and interactive field the commercials shown are not as burdening as on TV. Viewers are often met with two options when it comes to pre-roll ads. They must either sit through the whole thing before going to the content they wanted, or they can skip ahead after having watched 10 or 15 seconds of the ad, according to the policies of the website they are on.
Even though basically viewers are forced to watch the ads, there is nothing different about these ads and the TV commercials which aired in the breaks. This is not a major change or something viewers could not get used to in exchange for watching some free online content. One thing marketers have constantly in mind when dealing with this format of online video advertising is the fact that the viewer who watches it is more engaged as he was online looking for something and he is very attentive to the content which comes up in his searches.
Since campaigns are usually drafted by keeping in mind all media, many of them still are centered on the TV commercial and the online versions are usually re-purposed from their TV counterparts. However, the main expectation and trump card of the online ad is the interactive feature. This means that if anything your commercial had to say really drew the attention of the watcher he/she will find it easy to take action right away, by using elements on the ad to buy/download/subscribe etc.
Even so, some ads are more interactive than others and this is why only 55% of viewers sit through the ad, while 45% abandon completely. In order to function properly, the material presented needs to complement the ad and give users hints on how to get the best use out of a product. This is functional and time effective.
When it comes to effective online video advertising, pre-roll ads with skip-ahead options usually are time savers. Marketers have to work with time as their major disadvantage because it does not matter how interesting your ad gets toward the end if it only has the first 10-15 seconds to convince the viewer not to skip ahead. This may be challenging, but the results of having your message transmitted to the liking of the viewer are worth it.
The pre-roll is exactly the bridge users needed to go from the passive TV commercials to the more interactive online ones. In time, marketers hope to find the right formula for online video advertising to keep viewers engaged and to get them clicking on all of the important buttons with enticing online content and the right information.
