Tom Hespos with MediaPost’s OnlineSPIN had an interesting post this week titled “My Top Problems With Online Video.” As we have noted before, in order for advertising to achieve maximum ROI, it’s key that the delivered advertising is done so in a contextually-relevant manner. Advertising to the user doesn’t require any rocket science – it’s really a fairly simple equation: get the right message in front of the right user at the right time. Another key factor to this equation is that the user must understand and expect the delivered advertising. In Zango’s case, our users expect advertising to be delivered to them while they are surfing online because that’s the trade-off they agreed to in order to access content. Hespos’ article further digs into the user experience when confronted with video advertising:

“Could we please provide some context for the people who click to see a video of, say, three guys smashing a network printer to bits with a sledgehammer, and end up seeing an Acme commercial? As much as we’d like to think that people have an expectation of preroll ads before they get to see content, that just ain’t so.”

What does the Acme commercial have to do with the video? Nothing. Does the user have any context for the ad delivery? No. did the user opt-in to the ad delivery? No. The point here is that more often than not, such advertising does little more than infuriate the user.
As Hespos’ points out; “A link spawns a video player with no advance warning, and I’m left thinking, ‘Hey, where’s the text? I didn’t want to watch a video (ad)now.’ Back button ensues.”

Hespos’ article can be found here.