Creative Destruction

So much for subtlety. Tribal Fusion -- Exponential Interactive's online ad network and rep firm -- has launched a full-page video overlay ad unit that is guaranteeing marketers 100% user engagement.

The so-called Full Engagement Video units are available in display, interstitial, and mobile formats. Standard IAB display units play video assets in-banner, and invite users to roll over and engage with the ad.

Once users roll over, the ad unit expands to the width and height of the browser window and plays the video as a full-page overlay for a thoroughly unavoidable ad experience.

Interstitial Full Engagement Video ads launch a video immediately once the user clicks on a link to navigate to another page, while mobile units play prior to the launch of the game or app that the user clicks.

By offering multiple pathways for reaching viewers with video ads, Tribal Fusion's Full Engagement Video is designed to provide the same reach and breadth of inventory as traditional display campaigns.

"Consumers are spending an increasing amount of time online watching video, but advertisers have no scalable way to successfully and easily capture and engage these users," said Harris Bernstein, director of sales at Tribal Fusion.

According to ComScore, 84.4% of Web users in the United States viewed online video in October, with the average viewer watching 10.8 hours per month.

Full Engagement Video leverages existing video assets and is priced on a cost-per-play model, ensuring that advertisers pay only when a user launches or views the unit. It is also available on a run-of-network basis.

How about ad networks that actually add value to the end user? This feels like advertising that is aimed at the advertiser, not at the end user that it it is supposed to be be for. This is why I'm a big fan of ad networks such as Fusion Ads and The Deck that are niche networks, but have substantially higher click throughs, and are truly interesting to the community that views the ads.

I like how Seth Godin put it recently:
"The digital world, even the high end brands, has become a sleazy carnival, complete with hawkers, barkers and a bearded lady. By the time someone actually gets to your site, they've been conned, popped up, popped under and upsold so many times they really have no choice but to be skeptical."