Smoothing the Path for Online Video Ads

Video content is flowing onto the Web, and the video-watching audience is growing correspondingly. So it’s not surprising that direct marketers are showing interest in attaching ads to that content and reaching this online audience.

Marketing research firm eMarketer forecasts that ad revenue from online video will hit $775 million this year, an 89% increase from the $410 million spent in 2006.

But creating and placing online video ads can be a pretty daunting task. Recently, however, a number of ad companies and networks have come up with solutions to help marketers add sound and motion to their Internet messages.

Last November Atlas, the digital marketing division of aQuantive, debuted a feature for its third-party ad server dashboard that automates the process of inserting ads before or after a streaming video clip. As with the graphical and interactive ads the company delivers, Atlas In-Stream Video will let DMers and ad agencies manage their creative, plan campaigns, and then get back analytics reports on those campaigns.