The research concerning whether online visitors are willing to watch ads with video seems to be all over the place. You hear from one that says one thing and another says something else.
An article in eMarketer talks about some of the conclusions we've been talking about here, that everything is pretty much up in the air at this time.
The question is why? How can it be so hard within this one space to find answers?
Like I quoted Steve Jobs saying in reference to his attitude toward getting input from focus groups: "It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."
The point isn't the focus group here, but in understanding the many times people don't know what they want until they're given an opportunity to try it out.
That's where online video ads are at this time in my thoughts. I've mentioned before that if you ask anybody in the world if they want to watch an ad, they're going to pretty much say no; that's a given.
Rather than be so whimpy about it, we need to just throw some stuff out there and quit worrying about how people will respond. They won't know the limits of what they are willing to go through until someone starts trying out different things and throwing it out there and see what the feedback is.
The Internet is especially strong here and should be used in that experimental way. If people want to view our videos, they're not going to abandon us because something is tried. Rather they'll give us their feedback one way or another if they care about it.
This has been confusing because it's being thrown around in a theoretical and philosophical ways, rather than just giving people practical situations they interact with. We need to stop asking and start doing. Consumers at this time don't know what they want because they don't have enough experience to make a decision.
All the studies, surveys and questionaires aren't going to give an answer. We need to get a little guts and just do it and the people will help guide us with their responses.
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