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Online video ad execs confident about 2009

October 21, 2008 — 2:29pm ET | By Pete Wylie

Tools

Despite gloomy macroeconomic reports and predictions of display ad dropoffs, a group of top online video ad executives told FierceOnlineVideo they are more than confident about the industry going into 2009.

In the roundtable discussion with Fierce, Jesse Chenard, chief strategic officer for Tremor Media, Rob Manoff, CEO of Jambo Media, and Michael Shehan, CEO of spotxchange, agreed that online video is poised for growth in the coming year.

"We've seen a decrease in ads from financial companies and travel companies because of the downturn in their industries," Shehan said, "but other people are seeing the benefit of moving to online video advertising and the amount of targeting you can do."

Manoff, whose company mainly targets small to medium sized businesses who have not yet integrated video, said the metrics provided by comScore were a major factor in the success of his company's video platform and accompanying ads.

"When you can dig deep and see not only how many times people watch an ad all the way through, but also can see demographic information, it shows them exactly who makes up their consumer base, which is good for the small to medium publisher ultimately," Manoff said. "We still think pre-roll ads are going to be the standard for a while, but we're excited about other formats as they develop."

Tremor Media was a major partner with the IAB as they work to develop ad standards, and Chenard said this was one thing holding ad buyers from migrating more quickly to online ad formats.

"You see so many variations of ads out there, pre-roll, overlay, accompanying banner, the list goes on," Chenard said. "This leads to ad buyers not really knowing what they're getting sometimes when they place online video ads, and I think standardization of names of ads and types will really drive their adoption of the format."

All of the participants in the roundtable agreed with Chenard that standardization would be helpful across platforms. They said increasingly efficient and accurate metrics are also helping them show the value of online video ads to customers. The panelists were confident that the growing amount of professional online video content to place ads around, increasingly standardized ad formats, and advanced metrics will help drive online video ad growth through the next year and beyond.