Will "The Pool" finally settle the standards debate for online video advertising?

Picking up where the IAB left off last year, a new group has formed to lead the charge for online video advertising standards. At the helm is Publicis Groupe's Starcom MediaVest, the media buying powerhouse responsible for more than $16 billion in annual advertising.

Suzanne Vranica at the Wall Street Journal interviewed the folks at Publicis Groupe's VivaKi who said the standards initiative will help make online video media buying easier and more efficient, which will be increasingly important as marketing budgets retrench and buyers go with more-established, tried-and-true media. (I'm actually not sure how much retrenchment will happen in the relatively small / nascent online video advertising market, which even by the most conservative estimates will grow by 45 percent this year to more than $850 million)

Media buyers, advertisers and media businesses all have a vested interest in efforts to help accelerate growth in the online video market and successful online video advertising formats. This is especially true considering that audiences continue to fragment and go online for media / brand experiences, which are increasingly self-selected and controlled by the consumers themselves.

At Brightcove, we sit in a unique position as one of the most widely-used platforms for ad-supported online video businesses. We continue to see a handful of advertising formats drive the majority ad-supported business growth for our customers. But it's also clear that advertisers have an appetite to experiment with formats that drive deeper engagement with consumers. And media companies are on the lookout for less intrusive advertising formats that at the same time command higher CPMs. It will be very interesting to see what kind of formats rise to the top in The Pool's focus groups.

Vranica's story says the initiative whittled down 30 ad formats and will use focus groups to test five. Starcom MediaVest and their partners will promote the two most successful formats to the market. The story doesn't get into the criteria for success, a timetable for recommendations, or their go-to-market strategy.

-- Josh Hawkins