According to a survey from the Online Publishers Association (OPA) Internet video ads are effective and longer ads are more effective than shorter ones. Huh? I thought I read that wrong, but I went back and saw the press release and there it was.

In my experience, the biggest offender is CNN which routinely uses 30-second pre-roll ads. Thirty seconds is OK for the TV world–although it’s becoming less relevant for today’s fast-paced viewers. But it’s not OK for online video ads. It’s simply too long. Advertisers that simply re-purpose their TV spots on the Internet are lazy and waste my time.

Most video content is under 5 minutes. A New York Times story says that the average length of a streamed video is 2.6 minutes, according to ComScore.

So usually I’m watching a 30-second ad to watch a 30-second video clip. That sucks. And it’s a sure way to turn off viewers and visitors to your site.

Advertisers must learn to create new video spots for the Web and make them short. In fact, the shorter the better. I’d say anywhere from 5 to 15 seconds is a good length. Anything longer and people will get impatient and go somewhere else.

Even though CNN is a big purveyor of long ads, they’ve started doing other things right with ads. After CNN’s redesign last month, they stopped using a pop-up window for watching videos and they are now integrated into the web page. CNN has also created a sidebar Flash-based ad that accompanies the ad that’s playing. Take a look at a screen grab I copied:

So the CDW ad really takes up the entire page which is effective. However, the actual video ad was 23 seconds, which is still too long for me.

Oddly enough, the OPA study found that 30-second ads were more effective than 15-second ads “providing 30% ‘lift’ and raising ‘brand consideration’ by 23%”.

Perhaps I’m a different kind of consumer. When I see an video pre-roll advertisement, I tune out completely by switching to another open tab on Firefox. Or I even sometimes lower the volume so I don’t have to hear it or see it.

I’m very susceptible to marketing tactics (ask anyone that knows me) so I think if I was getting very targeted and personalized advertisements, I might not tune out of video ads so easily.

[Via OPA press release and and the earlier press release.]

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