Can ‘Out-Stream’ video ads help save mobile advertising?
A pair of ad-tech startups believe they have solutions to all of these challenges, and they are starting to get some traction among top publishers and advertisers.
The companies Virool and Teads are both looking to pioneer a relatively new digital ad category which some are calling “out-stream ads” –essentially video ads that run on text-dominant Web pages as opposed to “in-stream ads,” which generally run just prior to or during video content in video players on websites.
Of course, jamming video ads onto Web pages is nothing new. The ad industry, as well as reams of consumers, have long complained about those video ads that play automatically in banners, often at the bottom of pages where they can’t even be seen.
However, these two tech companies believe they have built a more elegant, respectful option for brands: video ads that play automatically, but only when people scroll to a point on a Web page where they can be seen. While each company’s product works a bit differently, generally speaking, instead of running in banners or along the sides of Web pages, these ads typically appear in between paragraphs of articles–or right within editorial streams on mobile Web pages.
