What’s puzzling to me is that they offered up one of their ad breaks in the entertainment video player to local affiliates but decided to farm out the management of the ad insertion to WorldNow instead of taking care of it in-house. So whether you’re a WN affiliate or not you’re paying them for the ad insertion.

The other thing is that local affils only have access to ad positions in the entertainment player, not the news player which is separate.

If ABC opened up that player to local affils -AND- was managing the inventory on its own and not farming it out, there’s some incremental revenue to be had there through the charges local affils are paying to WorldNow for ad insertion and management to both players.

BTW: I’m also lumping FX under the Fox umbrella. There’s a couple of shows from them that go right into my Hulu queue, but my impression is that at least one (The Riches) may (or may not) be running at least week, behind.

I don’t know about everyone else and I’ll give them points for trying, but those things all strike me similar to the clickable overlays from YouTube. Perhaps a comment that I made to another board did away with it or maybe someone else noticed, but Playboy’s 55th Anniversary Playmate search on YouTube (click my name) was participating in the overlay program for their introductory video, but one of the sponsors was the State of Utah and though it was just Holly’s “How-to”, if it had expanded to the entrants, I don’t know how many people would’ve paused a Playmate audition in the first 20 seconds to watch an overlaid clip of a Jeep in the desert.

Right now, I’d have to say that among the “most effective ads” in streaming video (in my opinion) is the current one for Tylenol and the Papa John’s, where the girl is “watching” the show, pulls-up Papa John’s website, orders a pizza and it’s “delivered” at the end of the broadcast.

The cruiseline thing with the obnoxious music and insulting tagline might also get a mention because it’s been repeated for months and the Pledge ad gets on people’s nerves, but I can’t even recall which cruiseline wants me to “look over there”, so their commercial may not work and if you scroll through USA, you’ll find more complaints about the “Pledge” ad than people commenting about the shows.

Of course, all of the above are simple videos, but they don’t demand any effort from the viewer and they do nothing to interrupt the shows.

“Watch All Commercials First” is an invitation to turn on the show, leave the room (or minimize the window) for ten minutes and then come back.

The web offers so many better ways to advertise… why not stretch a little?

Also, since I jumped back in… I read the THR article after my initial comment and I have to wonder how much of ABC.com’s dominance in “time spent on the site” is because they have a higher percentage of hour-long shows, compared to the other networks and because they’re not holding-back some of their best performers. (ER, L&O, etc.)

a friend has told me that the nbc affil in detroit has taken to referring folks to their “web channel” with more frequency as of late.

there’s been plenty of stuff to stream (i guess) with the mayor and all.

Also, since we’re on the subject of ABC.com: I’d also offer them congrats for designating the third (or fourth?) spot in their hourlies for local commercials. For example, the episode of “Grey’s” that I just watched was primarily sponsored by Florida Orange Juice, but the spot between 22 and 25 was for Beaver Toyoto in Santa Fe. I’ve noticed this with incresing frequency over the past several months. Both of the locals which have advertised were car dealers, but I think ABC deserves praise for opening the system up to the locals and the advertisers also should get something because they’re not just giving us a repurposed tv ad.