Today was a fantastic day. I spent all day out with the kids in an almost Spring like sunshine. But I also thought about the question on video ad formats a journalist questioned me on during this weeks MSN Video international press briefing. He thought the pre-roll was quite ‘unimaginative’. Hm. I gave that a second thought. And by gentle coincidence somebody in my team points me to this excellent article “Franco May Still Be Dead, But Pre-Roll Isn’t”. If Randy Kilgore were to answer the journalist yesterday he would have said “Well, if pre-roll is dead, I’m a monkey’s uncle (..). As someone on the front lines, trust me when I tell you there are more pre-roll ads being developed, more streamed content being monetized by pre-roll, and more planning for pre-roll campaigns than ever. It’s exploding.”
Supported by Kilgore in the back, let me repeat what I said yesterday: First: did you have a close look at all these “very imaginative” and very superior ad formats? It is the wild west. Let’s not start halucinating and think overlays are ‘it’. And let us think about poor online planners trying to get the 25 different formats coordinated over as many sites. Simplicity rules once in a while. Second: all those wacky ad formats do not always equate with great effectiveness or don’t give a great consumer experience. Pre-roll proves to work, at least for now. More innovation will come when it ads value to both the advertizer and the consumer. At MSN we only serve pre-roll ads in front of professional content and not in front of the user generated Soapbox clips. As an advertiser you know you’ll not be associated with another “lovelyprincess65 puts mentos in coffee see what happens” content, but more important for the effectiveness: the chance of bailing out of a pre-roll before watching the MTV clip you choose yourself is pretty small. Third, and certainly not last: we should rather start challinging and focussing more on the creative that is coming through. A boring TV ad doesn’t make a less boring pre-roll add. A highly entertaining TV ad makes for an engaging pre-roll. But the best pre-roll video ads are the ones created specifically for the web. A novel idea ? 
A big part of our business at Microsoft Advertizing is build on banners. Banners and pre-roll dead ? yeah right
The question is – how long is too long for a pre-roll?
[...] readers feel about ads being placed on video they have submitted to the site (or, for that matter, how advertisers feel). Time to tell advertisers about interactive [...]
In response to Paul’s queston of “how long is too long” the answer is “it depends”. First of all, advertisers need to consider where the ad is appearing. This is an exchange. The audience gets free content in exchange for sacrificing some of their viewing time to advertising. If the content they are receiving is a 30 minute television episode the audience is more likely to tolerate longer ads. Ads may appear as pre-rolls or distributed through the content in ad breaks. Whereas if it’s shorter content, let’s say a 3 minute music video, then we should be thinking of shorter ad durations (15-20 seconds). We also need to think about the what’s appropriate for the environment. For example, with our Messenger TV product we’re finding that the audience is more accepting of ads the shorter they are. This is because they are sharing videos with friends in real time. There are two people waiting for the ad to complete before they get their content. From an advertiser’s perspective they have a highly engaged audience who is eagerly anticipating the content, but also a more impatient audience who aren’t going to tolerate a 30 second ad. We’re encouraging our clients to submit ads under 15 seconds for this environment. Some have produced 7 second spots. If you need some concrete evidence, I’ll refer you to a YouGov survey from 2007 conducted in the UK: “A YouGov study, commissioned by Utarget Networks, today reveals that the overwhelming majority of UK Internet users are open to pre-roll online video advertising, so long as it does not extend past 15 seconds in length.” http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/363364/93-of-uk-internet-users-open-to-pre–roll-online-video-advertising.html?keywords=diffiniti