Burst offers alternative to 'disruptive' pre-roll video ads

To help prevent the problem of advertising-spawned "Web site abandonment" among consumers, Burst Media is using a new video ad channel to roll out a video ad technology dubbed "InBanner."

At the same time, Burst has also been working with partner Quattro on enabling some Web sites for mobile advertising, said Chuck Moran, Burst's director of marketing, in an interview with BetaNews.

Why is Burst using InBanner technology for video ads? In doing research, Burst found that more typical techniques for using video in Web ads often spurs viewers to click to another site when the ad starts, according to Moran.

Today's more conventional approaches -- in which "pre-roll or medium-roll" video is embedded into Web content -- are considered "disruptive" by users, he said.

"If you're interested in watching a 40-second news clips, and the first 15 seconds of it turn out to be an ad, chances are good that you'll stop watching it," he told BetaNews.

Instead, Burst's emerging InBanner video ads run apart from other content, to the side of the screen of somewhere else that isn't supposed to get in the way of the user's overall Web experience.

"But the ad can gain attention without being disruptive. And it can resolve into a banner with the advertiser's name on it," Moran said.

Burst has already been running some test ads, mainly on telecommunications sites, over its new video channel. Through the new channel -- Burst's first step into video advertising -- advertisers will be able to target specific sites such as health and fitness sites only with InBanner video.

Meanwhile, the sites enabled by Burst for mobile advertising have included RealGM, a "sports fantasy site," and ParentsPreview, an-depth move review site for parents, he said.

Also in the mobile ad arena, MobiTV today released data showing that, among other things, the entertainment and ad service for mobile phones is reaching three million adults viewers between the ages of 18 and 45, who subscribe to more than 50 different channels of live TV or digital music.

Also acording to the results, MobiTV users "engaged with ads the've viewed through the service at a rate 300 percent above direct response industry standards," and several advertiser-branded channels available through MoviTV "gained in popularity with usage that rivaled some (premium) channels," according to MobiTV officials.