Shoot Online
05/07/2007
Ken Liebskind
The growth of broadband video advertising was on full display Monday at the IAB Leadership Forum: Digital Video program in New York, where industry leaders presented their ideas on every key issue -- from the rise of Internet TV and consumergenerated media to the search for alternative formats to pre-roll.
Jason Hirshhorn, president of Sling Media Entertainment Group, which offers the Slingbox, a set top box that streams all kinds of audio and video content over a highspeed broadband internet connection, delivered a keynote address on the future of digital video. He explained how the distribution of video content on multiple platforms has transformed the way traditional broadcasters sell TV advertising, as evidenced by the recent NBC/Fox joint venture and CBS' Interactive Audience Network. And as traditional broadcasters compete to monetize their content online, YouTube has spawned a clip culture in which "anyone can publish video content, which takes a share out of traditional media."
At the afternoon keynote, Jonathan Lochhaas, director of eBusiness applications and technology for XM Satellite Radio and Raymond Velez, vice president, national technology lead for Avenue A/Razorfish, discussed the delivery of broadband video content on three screens -- 10 foot, 2 foot and 1 foot, for TV, Internet and mobile. They provided details on the new technology that is expanding the presence of video everywhere and issued a warning to Internet marketers -- "the 2 foot is fading away because of the preference of users and the new technology," Lochhaas said.
Riding CGM's Next Wave, the workshop on consumer-generated media, explored it first hand by shooting a consumer video in the conference room that was to be played back on YouTube later in the day. James Forni, executive producer at Critical Mass, said that consumer-generated media generates 30 billion page views a year and has achieved a 50 percent growth in 2007. He offered strategies on how to create consumer generated media ("know your audience") and how to shoot it ("on a tapeless camcorder"). Then he showed three Krispy Kreme spots by Hollywood director Jeremy Haft that showed how consumer-generated ads can be created by top talent without the brand's participation, creating witty spots that appeal to a young audience (although not necessarily the brand).
Video From the Top Down and Bottom Up was the workshop that covered pre-roll advertising, which is being used by two of the panelists, Jason Glickman, CEO of Tremor Media, and Gaye Sussman, president of ID Media. But the other panelists, Adam Gerber, VP advertising products and strategy at Brightcove, and Lars Bastholm, an executive creative director at AKQA/New York, urged advertisers to explore interactive ad formats, which are still being developed. Gerber said that advertisers could spend a fraction of what it costs to produce one TV :30 to "create versioned assets of different lengths to be delivered across different platforms." In this sense, not running pre-rolls can be both economically feasible as well as more pleasing to viewers.
Bastholm is looking to South Korea for new formats, where a creative agency, d.o.E.S. (dream of Electric Sheep), is playing ads with "multiple video streams that interact with each other, like an immersive wall of video." The format exists in South Korea because broadband connection speeds are higher than in the U.S., he said.
