AD:TECH - Broadband Advertising Moves From Theory to Practical Application

Monday's second Media Matters session, Impact of Brand Exposure Duration, was led by Broadband President and CEO Matt Wasserlauf. The panel included MSN Streaming Video Evangelist Todd Herman, Maven Networks CEO Hilmi Ozguc, Carat Interactive EVP Karim Sanajabi and RealNetworks Chief Strategy Officer Richard Wolpert.

Carat's Sanajabi began by saying media consumption in the 80s and 90s was about choice. That has now moved to one of control with consumers able to select only the media they want to consume. This, he claims, is a benefit for the growing segment of online video advertising. Sanajabi reviewed a Carat campaign for the launch of Adidas' "Impossible is Nothing" campaign which incorporated video ads on Yahoo and MSN. The campaign generated five million video-views and lifted brand awareness by six percent. A campaign promoting MTV's Sunday Stew cam in at an attractive CPM of $3.17 and generated a 50 percent lift in tune-in.

CNET's Wolpert discussed his companies expansion of Rhapsody into video and is exploring "pre-roll" ads to offer free music video downloads.

Maven's Ozguc tried to launch a full screen video, which bombed most likely due to hotel bandwidth limitations rather than technology issues. Yet, that is one sign that hints infrastructure isn't quite there to fully deliver this technology. Ozguc reviewed two campaign's which used Maven's technology. The first, for the movie "Master and Commander," offered high quality downloads of the movie trailer and behind the scenes footage. The effort generated a very high 26 percent click through to buy tickets. The second, for musician Ben Harper, centered on a "send to a friend" feature which offered the sender a free unreleased single to download. Harper's label, Virgin, saw their database of Harper fans triple.

MSN Video's Herman said Microsoft's efforts center on building a bridge between television advertisers and the web. MSN's efforts hope to allow consumers to control, condense and combine online video offerings. Herman pointed out online video advertising can offer fresh reach as many broadband users watch less TV and less clutter as broadcast television has over nine minutes per hour of advertising.

In all, this session was fairly content-rich, with many practical, real-world examples provided.