Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

Rebecca Lieb's article on whether people are listening to video ads on the web made me do some thinking.

My first thought was I could relate to her comment about not being plugged into online audio unless it's directly related to something I personally want to listen to. In other words, I'm not listening to audio online while I'm doing my work or surfing for my own personal interests. It's only when I'm listening to some type of news, music videos, interesting interview or teaching that I even turn on my speakers or pick up my headphones.

Now I say audio in connection to video because almost all video ads have an audio component with them.

I think of online video ads at this time in three different ways. The ads scattered around content online that could appear on any website connected to the advertisers demographic, pre-roll sponsored video ads and ads on long-form professional video. There's obviously more than that, but I mention these three for contrast.

Now I think the area that will be the most challening for online video ads will be those scattered across various sites where people are only looking and searching for something that interests them; it has the most chance to be disruptive to their experience.

If a visitor also searches for some time around a specific site, there's the additional problem of ad rotation, which for the most part won't exist. Meaning, they may view the same ad over and over again, adding to a bad experience.

Even in the pop-up ad days you could insert a little code in the site and it would only happen once a day for that specific visitor. Online video may do well to consider something similar; either with rotation of ads or exluding it altogether once viewed.

One thing I especially hate are those roll-out video ads that are almost impossible to look at the content of page without accidently mousing over the picture. While that's obviously the reason it's made that way, I think every time it's happened with me, I pretty much leave the page immediately. I just don't want to mess with it that much.

Some of the pre-roll sponsored video ads work for me if they're not too long. Those that insist upon doing the 30-second ad only keep me there if the interest in the video overrides the time it takes to get through the ad. Probably over 90 percent of the time I just leave if it's lengthy.

The area that will be interesting in the near future will be ads centered around long-form professional video. Because people have been socialized into accepting ads on professional video content, even though DVR usage is increasing, there will be some cases and demographics where it will be a successful fit.

For example, the demographic that watches the Hallmark TV channel has a 95 percent retention rate when commercials come on. So if that same demographic is known to frequent certain types of professional video sites, or visit other sites of interest, video ads will probably be a very effective way to reach them without it being considered intrusive.

While many marketers are searching for an answer, in online video, there won't be any one answer, but a series of answers that will depend on the demographic and type of content that the ad will be presented on.

I would also think there should be some short text, for a short time, overlaying the ad as well, since there are a lot of people when surfing in general, who won't have their audio on.

Has anybody heard of an online study that has answered the question of what percentage of people surf the net without their audio on?