If Not Pre-Rolls, Then What?

There’s been a ton of conversation on this blog and elsewhere about how to monetize web video.

I am not a fan of pre-rolls. I think they will cause many of the viewers to move on before ever getting to the video they wanted to watch. Post-rolls are also problematic because many web videos are not watched through until the end. Mid-stream or mid-rolls are more interesting to me and will probably emerge as an important monetization system over time. But the technology to do streaming ads/mid-rolls isn’t widely available yet.

So what to do if you’ve got a hot web video property and want to monetize it?

I really like what Wallstrip did today with Lifelock.

This harkens back to 1950s TV (the show itself harkens back to 1970s TV). Lifelock got a blipvert (the 3 second pre-roll ala YouTube) and then branding throughout the show. And then a post-roll which could have and should have been way more informative than it was. After seeing Lifelock all over the show for four minutes, I was wondering what they do. Lifelock provides indentity theft protection. I could have used 15 or 30 seconds on that at the end with no problem.

But this is an approach that makes a lot of sense to me. It’s not automated. It doesn’t scale. It can’t be targeted. And so it has it’s limitations. But for where we are right now in the world of web video, it’s a pretty clever model.

If you want to advertise on Wallstrip like Lifelock did, contact Howard. I am sure he’ll be happy to hear from you.