VideoEgg Overlaying Ads in Strange Places
VideoEgg is running consumer electronics ads for customers like Canon and Hewlett-Packard next to some interesting videos, including an awful-looking explosives accident in Iraq, on the entertainment portion of Military.com. Corey Kronengold, who works for VideoEgg competitor Tremor Media, calls out the company in a post on Online Video Watch today.
We’re not saying anything bad’s going on — obviously users of the site apparently think these videos are entertaining, so they might very well be receptive to overlaid advertising — but the juxtaposition is a bit strange. The advertisers ostensibly approved the placement, though we’re not sure why they’d want to be popped over an ad making fun of what looks to be a serious explosives accident.
As Kronengold writes,
[T]his isn’t the type of content you’d normally associate with traditional brand advertisers. Worse still, the HP post-roll ads are a minute long and running against clips that are 4 and 10 seconds long.
VideoEgg (which has seriously softened the language on its homepage since teasing YouTube for copying its ad formats last week) assures potential customers, “All content is reviewed by real people before any ads are served ensuring all content is safe.” We’ve asked the company to comment on these particular ad placements, and will update when we hear back.
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Mr. Kronengold makes a very valid point. I would like to hear from him more in the future.
Michael Merkur on August 30th, 2007 at 7:21 am - Permalink
Thank you, Mike. Interesting ad placement is a personal fetish of mine that I’ve written about a few times on our blog, OnlineVideoWatch.com.
Not to self-promote too shamelessly, but we will be launching a new blog/destination for bad ad/content matches shortly at AdsGoneBad.com.
Corey Kronengold on August 30th, 2007 at 10:04 am - Permalink
It doesn’t have to be virtually to be a poorly placed ad. Check out these very find examples of billboards in the wrong places: http://www.oddee.com/item_87332.aspx
Russell on September 4th, 2007 at 12:08 pm - Permalink
[...] to be relevant to them, 46% think they need to be relevant to web site’s content. Lesson: Consumer electronics ads next to people being blown up aren’t going to work. Make your ads contextual, relevant and of course [...]
5 Ways to Make Web Video Ads Work « NewTeeVee on September 24th, 2007 at 10:27 am - Permalink
I think that in-video ads are the worst idea in the history of advertising. I would much rather have the ads display before the video plays. That way if people are interested in the ad, they don’t have to pause their video or be interrupted.
trademark registration on December 9th, 2007 at 11:59 am - Permalink