CorpComms Magazine

'Streaming video and audio from the internet site you have accessed is not permitted. Further access is denied.' Across the country, employers have clamped down on internet use, and this particular prohibitive message greets London-based staff at a major global bank when they try to access YouTube, the video-sharing site. Many other offices have similar policies.

Their action is unsurprising. According to a study carried out in January this year, social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace cost the UK around £6.5 bn a year in lost productivity. In addition, Google sites, including YouTube, picked up over 11 mn unique visitors from office locations this January, according to comScore, a digital media research firm (see Internet access from work locations, right). Line managers must be pulling their hair out.

For advertisers, on the other hand, this represents an opportunity. The many hours whittled away watching online video offer the chance to push a brand or product. Furthermore, internet advertising can be very closely targeted. Adverts for extreme sports holidays could be run alongside video of dirt bike racing, for example.

And yet, surprisingly, progress in this area remains slow. Popular sites are treading carefully in order not to scare away a fickle online audience. 'With YouTube, we are always looking to spread our products while at the same time not alienating the viewers,' explains Gareth Evans, senior associate of advertising at Google.

Short shrift?
The main challenge is time: online video clips often last just a few minutes. In fact, it's possible that short content is so popular because so much of it is consumed by office workers. They do not have the time - or the nerve - to sit through, say, a whole episode of Never mind the Buzzcocks, but a few short clips of Simon Amstell, the host of the show, doing stand-up, are a lot more digestible - especially if the boss is in a meeting.

Traditionally, viewers have suffered a few minutes of adverts during a television programme. But sticking a 30-second advertisement in the middle of a three-minute video is clearly not acceptable and may well turn off viewers. One tactic that has been around for a while is the pre-roll, where viewers are forced to watch a short advert of around 15 seconds before their own video begins. (A post-roll is similar, but comes after the chosen video).

Pre-rolls are attractive for two main reasons. Firstly, adverts made for television can simply be transferred online, saving on production costs and, secondly, running the same advert across several different media helps integrate a marketing campaign. 'Pre-rolls are easy to understand, easy to implement and high yield for publishers - so they are not going to go away any time soon,' comments Scott Button, chief executive of Unruly Media, a London-based distributor of online video.

Over the top
But there are also drawbacks. New media are all about choice. If viewers are unhappy with the service of one site, the same content can almost certainly be found somewhere else with less intrusion. Button points out that digital TV recorders mean viewers have not been forced to watch television advertisements since 1999. 'Given that cultural context, how can we think it makes sense to force 15-second adverts down people's throats when they're watching short-form content on the web?' he asks.

Tellingly, Google has resisted introducing pre-rolls on YouTube. Instead, the search engine is experimenting with overlays: after 10 or 15 seconds, an advert appears in a bar taking up around 20 percent of the bottom of the video. The bar sits there for around 15 seconds and then, if the viewer takes no action, disappears. At first these adverts featured text only, but now they have been updated to run animation. If the user clicks on the advert, the original video pauses and a second video appears, showing a full-length advert. Viewers then have the opportunity to click through to the brand website and find out more or make a purchase.

The programme has been running in the US for several months, but only began to be used in the UK in February this year. One of the first to take up the opportunity was Ubisoft, an international computer games developer and publisher. It ran overlays on YouTube for a new video game called Lost. 'The advertiser can't choose how long the advert stays there, but it can choose which video it appears on,' explains Evans. 'It's still in what we call Beta, however. There is a limited amount of content that can be advertised against to make sure we get the experience right for users.'

Yahoo!'s video-sharing site offers both pre-rolls and overlays. Adverts placed before video can run for a maximum of 30 seconds and can be clicked on to take the viewer to a website to see the whole two to three-minute ad. 'Anything running longer than that doesn't give the user an incentive to go to the brand's website and see what it's all about,' says a spokesperson for Yahoo!. 'If users can see the whole advert on Yahoo!, they won't be driven to an external location.'

Fitting in
Microsoft is also experimenting in this area. A recent story from Associated Press reports that the software giant wants to tailor overlay ads to individual videos, so the ad appears when it least disrupts the on-screen action.

With overlays, advertisers can make sure their ads appear only against certain content, so brands can target office workers with the items they may want to splash out on come pay day. For example, the advertising manager at clothing retailer Topshop could place overlays on a video of Kate Moss out and about in London, explains Rachel Hawkes, account director at Elemental Communications, an online media consultancy. Viewers could click through to learn more about the jeans Moss is wearing or the handbag she is carrying, with the option to buy the product online.

In the future, viewers may be given the option to watch as many adverts as they feel are necessary before making a decision. Button says that, in these instances, because the viewer will have chosen to interrupt his or her own experience with commercial content, 'it will make sense to offer longer clips, perhaps even several clips, enabling viewers to spend minutes immersed in content provided by the brand.'

Advertising on short-video content is becoming more sophisticated. But perhaps the most desirable situation is when viewers choose to watch content created by a brand. The recent success of the Cadbury gorilla advertisement, for example, in which a man in a gorilla suit plays the drums to Phil Collins' In the air tonight, was watched by millions of people on YouTube.

Similarly, the Sony Bravia campaign, featuring hundreds of multi-coloured balls bouncing through San Francisco, was a big viral hit. 'This, of course, is what great TV advertising has always aspired to - to be as good as or better than the programme content surrounding it,' notes Button.

Online video has certainly made its mark on one office, at least. In a spoof of the Cadbury ad on YouTube, an unknown employee dressed as a gorilla mimics the original commercial. But instead of using drums, he beats his sticks against the office photocopier.

share me: del.icio.us | digg | reddit | Tweet