Well, Joost now has something a lot of other video services don't: advertisers. The company, which was started by Skype co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, said today it has signed three month deal with 32 major advertising, including P&G, Coca-Cola and Visa. Joost plans to make it advertising-friendly environment by offering traditional 30-second mid-roll spots, as well as other formats. It remains to be seen, however, whether 30-second spots will resonate with online couch potatoes, who can change channels with the click of a mouse.

Fred Wilson has come to the conclusion pre-rolls (ads before a video starts playing) are dead on arrival; while post-rolls (ads played after a video are promising because they're "well targeted and entertaining". He's wrong because its way to early arrive at this conclusion given we're arguably only 11 months into the online video revolution.
To date, pre-rolls have failed to resonate because advertisers are approaching video clips in the same way they approach traditional television. This is misguided because consumers are willing to watch a 15-second or 30-second ad if it's before, during or after a 30-minute or hour-long program. In the online video world where clips last 30 seconds to five minutes, showing a 15 or 30-second ad using a traditional approach before a short video is a disconnect with the medium.
What the advertising industry needs to do is re-calibrate its approach to online video (and pre-rolls and post-rolls) by realizing ads need to be shorter, punchier and more aligned with most video content, which tends to be bubble gum-like entertainment. Look at the way that Rocketboom has made post-rolls part of its modus operandi by creating its own ads, which also tend to be entertaining. The ad industry needs to embrace an edgier and shorter approach to online video spots. They - and Fred Wilson - will discover that pre-rolls work if you do them right.
Note: One more thought about online advertising in general. One of the challenges facing advertisers and advertisers critics is getting their head around the fact it's still early, early days, and there's still an awful lot of experimenting and testing happening. This makes it very difficult to come up with a sweeping generalization about many of the things happening online.

Technorati Tags: Advertising, Video

It's still early days but I think Google's move into the radio advertising business could revolutionize (or perhaps evolve) the way the industry does business. In a test project, Google is providing 20 AdWords customers with access to more than 730 stations, which run ads in more than 260 U.S. markets. The AdWords system is linked through Google's dMarc, division, which was acquired for as much as $1.13-billion earlier this year (it was Google's biggest deal before YouTube came along). According to CNet, the 20 selected customers will see a new "audio ads" tag when they log into the AdWords system, which allows them to bid on air spots and target their ads by geography, station type, listener demographics and time of day. Given that the radio business has operated in much the same way for decades, Google is trying to implement a huge new approach to selling advertising. It could be the wave of the future or it could fall flat on its face. Nevertheless, give Google credit for trying something that could potentially be extremely disruptive. As well, the beta test and Google's deal with BSkyB are more evidence of the company's strategic thrust into new markets beyond the online paid-search business.

I thought it was just me receiving hundreds of e-mail messages over the past few weeks featuring the subject line "It's me, xxxx" that featured information about some yet-to-be-discovered stock but it turns out I'm just being caught up in the new spam onslaught hitting inboxes around the world. According to spam-filtering firm Ironport, the amount of spam has doubled over the past year, and it now accounts for more than 90% of e-mail messages.

Clearly, something needs to be done because all the efforts to filter out spam and shut down spammers isn't doing the job any more - if it was doing the job at all. So what needs to be done? Is there an effective way to pursue spammers other than convincing different governments around the world to make it illegal? One of the many challenges in shutting down spammers is the tools they're using to deliver their payloads, which include using other people's computers through downloaded viruses, malware or spyware.

If spam (including splogs and comment spam) continues to proliferate, it could choke the Internet and threaten innovation. After all, it's difficult to drive a Porsche down the super-highway if most of the lanes are bogged down by slow-moving jalopies, right?

For anyone curious about b5media's roots and where it's heading, check out an interview that CEO Jeremy Wright did with Media Industry Professional Profiles.