Moving beyond annoying pre-roll ads

Cory Bergman December 8th, 2006

One of the big struggles with user-created video is selling ads that don’t interrupt playback and turn users away. Egghead’s “viewer initiated brand experiences” are focused on moving beyond pre-roll ads with non-invasive opportunities (video demo) such as graphical tickers (see below) that animate on at a certain time and then disappear a few seconds later. Click it and the ad will play instantly in the same player. There are also text tickers that Egghead says can attract as high as a 5 percent click through, and they also have “end caps” that encourage you to click to watch an ad. The pricing model? You pay a low CPM for the invitation and a higher CPM for the ad that plays when they click. This isn’t entirely new, as Brightcove and a couple others have been selling similar ad overlays.