@ OMMA: The Future Of Online Video Is The Search For How To Pay For It

There’s been a lot of news about online video over the past few days – the upgrading of MySpaceTV and the hiring of former Amazon exec Jason Kilar to head the News Corp.-NBC video venture, to name two. The final OMMA Video conference panel asked experts to provide a crystal ball view of the next few years in online video’s development:

Mark Kapczynski, VP & GM InStream Solutions, EyeWonder: Internet and mobile aren’t viewed as equals, still viewed as growing. You’re looking for that one I Love Lucy, that one big event, to hit the internet. And if it’s going to come at all, it’ll be in the next year or two.

Nancy Dunn, VP, Advertising Strategy, ClipSyndicate: Content will gravitate to its natural home. Take news for example. Newspapers don’t break news anymore, neither does the evening TV news. It’s broken on the internet. Just think of the impact of mobile.

Alan Schulman, chief creative officer, Brand New World: Advertisers are looking for distribution, eyeballs, compelling content and measurability. We have measurability down to a great extent. On the distribution level, it’s great to see YouTube scaling so well. But advertisers want quality environments. Is YouTube and sites like it a quality environment? That question will continue to hang above the heads of advertisers.

Gregory Wilson, Red Ball Tiger: I don’t know what’s going to happen next week, let alone three years from now. It has to be spinning around in consumers’ minds as well. To me, it’s easier to go to CBS than to search for something online. I just think the bigger players are going to have dominance and the smaller ones are going to have to fight like hell to survive.

Mike Cassidy, president and CEO, Undertone Networks: Video is going to have a major impact to deliver one-to-one marketing solutions.

Zeroing in on the issue of pre-roll, the audience was asked by a show of hands if they like this form. Naturally, about two out of 50 people in the room signaled their approval. To varying degrees, the panel agreed pre-rolls are here to stay – unless someone can come up with another way to support content production. The panel’s moderator, Mike Bloxham, director of Insight and Research, Center for Media Design at Ball State University, pointed the acceptance of cinema advertising. “People used to laugh at cinema advertising, now you have people blogging about the best ads.”

Wilson strongly rejected the model of cinema ads, saying, “I hate cinema ads. I avoid theaters that show it and if I do see them, I complain to the manager and ask him why is showing this – and still raising the price of a ticket? This model won’t work for the web. We need to find a better way. We need to change this.” One other thing he doesn’t want is product placement. “It’s a crock. When someone holds up a bottle of Evian on TV, is anyone being fooled? Is anyone being enticed? It’s only being done because we can’t think of anything else to do.”

Schulman added: Let’s not dismiss pre-roll so quickly. The production facilities that could create great work have resided on the broadcast side and the broadband side gets to borrow it occasionally. We need to change the scope of the production for broadband, pre-roll ads. We have not seen the best of this form.

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