Break Media, the leading men’s focused media portal, today announced the introduction of a suite of (semi) new ad formats, dubbed the “Interactive Engagement Suite.”
Andrew Budkofsky, EVP of Sales and Partnerships, Break Media emphasized the formats’ focus on delivering strong brand messages for the advertising clients, as well as the ability to scale.
The formats include a “Videositial,” the “Page Engage,” the sushi-inspired “Video Roll,” and an “Interactive Pre-roll.”
Never one to let a release go by without some criticism, I can’t help but comment on a few of the formats. The Videostitial, for example, is hardly a new unit. In fact, it was back in 2000 when Unicast rolled out their “Superstitial” format featuring full screen, pre-cached video. That takes nothing away from the format’s effectiveness, or the benefits of the scale of today’s broadband penetration compared to a decade ago. Additionally, it seems counter-intuitive to introduce what is essentially a full screen :15 second commercial when people are clamoring to be less like TV. That said, I’m in the fan camp. People may want things to be different, but Break (and other publishers)’s job is to deliver advertising that works for their clients. A full screen, high quality video ad packs a lot of branding punch.
The Page Engage, is an interesting take on the expanding banner. Hovering over a 300 x 250 (or any standard banner size, I’d imagine) launches a microsite, offering a richer, more engaging experience for those that opt in. Video ad net Brightroll offers similar units, their “Marquee” formats.
The Video Roll is a player-in-page ad unit that has typically been seen in the ad network and hyper syndication environments. Essentially a video player-as-ad, a rollover can expand the unit to provide a companion banner for additional branding, interactivity and response. It is most akin to Tremor Media’s Page Roll format, which has proven to be highly effective and scalable, particularly in delivering video advertising and (sponsored) content to publishers lacking in-stream video.
The Interactive Preroll offers an interactive end-slate that allows a user to view more video content from an advertiser or continue on to the content. For comparison, it is similar to Tremor Media’s V-Choice format.
The similarities are natural, of course. VAST standards make it easier for advertisers to run advanced video advertising formats across a wide variety of publishers. The new IES ad units have already received a positive response in early testing in the marketplace, and advertisers are reporting positive user response rates and feedback.
“We don’t create these units in a vacuum—our advertising partners have been part of developing these units from the very beginning,” said Nick Wilson, CTO of Break Media. “Early results are extremely promising, and we’re excited to continue developing and exploring these new ad units with continued success.”