The debate and keeness of which video ad formats work best has escalated with the formation of ‘The Pool’ in the USA, a collection of advertisers and publishers (includes the likes of Microsoft, Yahoo, CBS’s CBS Interactive and Hulu.com) who are testing various formats.

Whilst IAB’s around the world have issued video advertisng guidelines and standards, there is little empirical evidence suggesting that the recomendations such as a 15 second pre-roll is the best approach. Starcom Mediavest began the research programme for the Pool on the 21st January.

Here in New Zealand our local IAB is drafting our own local video standards (I’ve been the chair on this committee), and has leaned heavily on the international IAB’s work in this area in the draft creation. Clearly good solid research and data about types of executions which work for types of campaigns/audiences and creatives is much needed to ensure we create guidelines that deliver for all parties.

I have been interested in the CEO of Brightroll’s comments to date in this area indicating pre-roll outperforms on nearly every metric tracked. In the fourth quarter of 2008, pre-roll accounted for the vast majority (83%) of ads placed by Brightroll.  As a counter to these statistics its worth noting this approach has been the first off the rank and is very TV agency friendly.