We're Their Leader, Which Way Did They Go?

A little chuckle every now and then is a good thing. The advertising industry thrives on controlling their customers and maximizing revenues with that control. They're frantically trying to stuff the video genie back into the bottle, and it ain't working.

In the "Video Insider", Steve Robinson points out the problem involved in trying to control a market where anyone can play, anytime they choose and the rules don't matter.

Steve remarks that, "despite collaboration among many members of the media ecosystem and the Internet Advertising Bureau to create a comprehensive set of guidelines and standards for in-video advertising and make the promise of broadband-delivered and interactive video a reality, every publisher still has its own video player implementation". They just hate that when that happens.

Of course, the objective here is to squash any form of free enterprise and "make Internet video a sound business". That is, of course, one that can have the entry gates controlled by the advertising industry.

Continuing to harp on the mantra that makes advertising only 50% effective, Steve says, "On the Internet, video publishers want higher CPMs and more value for their content". Unfortunately, Steve is wrong. Smart businesses want to know what's actually going on with their advertising and how it is being received. They want to know about "duration", not how many times a click happened. How interested were my viewers, not how many.

If you want more value for the content, produce video ads that people like to watch. Unfortunately, large corporations are slow to change. They can't measure duration because they're still locked into the old progressive download video models, so they can't measure anything except hits and clicks.

They're slow to change because it's all about the Benjamins. Progressive download video is dirt cheap and makes a lot of money when you wrap it in magic words like "CPM" and "standards". It benefits the seller tremendously and doesn't benefit the advertiser much at all.

Steve refers to the ability of anyone with a video camera and a streaming video account as "technical chaos" because they aren't lining up to pay the gatekeepers.

He is absolutely correct when he says, "All of us realize Internet-delivered digital video allows for more advertising engagement and consumer satisfaction than television. Ad avails are unlimited and ad formats will continue to evolve as the combination of software tools and creativity drive innovation for new and more captivating ad experiences".

Steve makes a last ditch plea to get that damn genie back in the bottle when he says, "But if we don’t get ahead of the technical chaos issue we will drown, and the efficiencies, accessibility and scalability of the Internet advertising ecosystem will be unrealized". The "we" in there is, of course, the advertising business.

We think anarchy is a good thing and makes evolution happen faster. By all means, let the huge corporations continue on in their tried and true lumbering ways and develop those standards that they should all live by.

As for the rest of us that are not not listed on NASDAQ or the Stock Exchange, march on! Get yourself a video producer and make some nice commercials. Utilize businesses like Global Video Technology to measure the duration of prospect interest in your message and hone your message. You have the ability to control your own message and it's distribution. You CAN improve on the 50% failure rate of traditional advertising, and save a ton of money in the process.

Watch your sales flourish as the biggies continue to debate which video ad sizes should become the standard and whether they should continue to annoy the hell out of sales prospects with pre-roll ads.

What are you waiting for? Start learning about how video advertising can work for you today!