At a time when ad pages and profits are taking a plunge, there is a news media that is seeing an increase in traffic and revenue- video advertising. While more dependence is already being placed on Internet advertising, many news organizations have also begun to lean more heavily on video reportage on their web sites, reports the New York Times, and this has created an outlet for more advertisements. Advertisers are becoming more willing to buy space on videos rather than just on static pages because of the increase in traffic as well as the ability to use dynamic advertising. Having a news organization run a ten second spot in front of a video report a couple minutes in length is becoming more desirable for more and more advertisers.

This change in advertising follows a change in readership as well. Readers have started to show that they are much more likely to press play on a video than they are to read an entire article on a web site. Thus, both advertisers and news organizations are beginning to take advantage of this.

To keep up with the demand for space for video advertising, sites have begun to post more video footage than they previously were. Sites that are run by cable news channels, particularly MSNBC.com and CNN.com- the two most streamed news sites on the web right now, are taking the most advantage of video reporting. Because producing video can be so expensive, these sites have a large advantage because they have so much previously shot video available to them. They can post a clip from an earlier television broadcast from their channel onto their web site and get additional advertising revenue from the clip.

In addition to recycled video, many sites also produce new footage daily for their web sites. The Wall Street Journal has a Webcast called "The News Hub" which is broadcast live from their newsroom twice daily at 8:30 am and 4:00 pm on WSJ.com. When aired live, the video has a sponsorship mention and a companion display ad. When it is replayed throughout the day, the video contains a pre-roll ad. The rate for a pre-roll has gone up 50% over the past year- from a $50 cost-per-thousand, or CPM, last fall to a current $75 CPM. Overall, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, digital video advertising has increased to $477 million in the first half of 2009- up by 38% since this time last year.

This increase could be because of the increase in public acceptance for the pre-roll. As they have been used more, viewers have become more tolerant of them. According to the New York Times article, web executives believe that many clients also think of video reporting on the web as an extension of TV- thus, they are more accepting of advertisements being present on them. Web videos also have the added bonus of available social networking: if a viewer likes the video, he is able instantly to tweet the link, post the URL onto his Facebook, and embed the video into his blog. This sharing instantly creates more viewers- and more ad revenue.

However, there is still controversy over "autoplay," videos that begin playing automatically as soon as the web page has loaded. This means that a viewer did not press play and is not necessarily watching the video. This tallies up totals of video streaming without legitimacy.

Video advertising is expected to continue to grow. According to the New York Times, the research firm eMarketer expects a 35-45% growth for each of the next five year. eMarketer projects a possible total of $5.2billion in revenue by 2014.

Source: New York Times