In “Why Pre-Roll Video Ads Don’t Scale,” Ad Age reporter Michael Learmonth writes about the perceived lack of scale in online video advertising, which he attributes at least in part to consumers doing “just about anything to avoid… video pre-roll.” In the piece, he also makes note of how many news-centric sites allow 30-second pre-roll prior to short clips, which may contribute to the tune-out factor.

On that point, we agree. For years, we’ve encouraged buyers to break the habit of repurposing TV :30 for pre-roll, instead offering something creative and compelling and more importantly, appropriate for the online audience. New interactive pre-roll units are allowing more creativity than ever with online video, and we need to treat the online viewing audience as the distinct entity it is, separate and different from TV viewers.

But to say there’s no scale? No way. According to our own annual publisher survey, 94% of respondents who use pre-roll said it either met or exceeded their expectations. Even if we allow for the understandable bullishness among publisher-side sellers, that’s a tremendous amount of success that advertisers, in turn, see from the unit. Worth noting, however, are some of the other factors publishers listed among their chief concerns: standardization (45%), interruption of user experience (33%) and lack of advertisers (29%.) Let’s examine each of those concerns as they relate to the issue of scale in turn:

Standardization. Four years ago, there was close to zero standardization in video advertising. The developing space was hampered by multiple file formats, different player types, no image quality guidelines, and perhaps most troubling to display veterans, no real ability to third-party serve creatives. In the past 36 months there has been a significant amount of progress in this area, due in large part to the VAST and VPAID standards. While not a panacea, these standards finally gave the industry a common denominator. And although they are not yet universally adopted, our survey showed that nearly 78% of publisher respondents report VAST compliance and 69% self-identified as being VPAID compliant. Publishers will be well served (forgive the pun) to quickly and fully adopt VAST and VPAID, in order to become eligible for the broadest set of available campaigns.

Interruption of user experience. Smart publishers will indeed be conscious and considerate of the experience their end users have when viewing content. After all, who hasn’t had the frustrating experience of clicking on a news piece, only to be subjected to seconds of player load time, followed by a :30 video, followed by more seconds of load time, followed at long last by the content? Publishers who work with their infrastructure and ad-serving partners to minimize player latency are already ahead of the game. And to Mr. Learmonth’s point, advertisers should increase the proliferation of shorter, more user-friendly :15 spots, particularly when targeting news and information sites.

Lack of advertisers. There’s certainly no lack of demand for video inventory, particularly in recent quarters, so we may interpret this concern as a lack of appropriate advertisers for a particular publisher. Not surprisingly, brand marketers (who make up the overwhelming majority – in fact, almost the entirety of pre-roll advertisers), are careful to run only across brand-safe inventory. The definition of “brand-safe” is subject to some degree of interpretation, once you remove the obvious sin bin categories such as adult, gambling, illegal sites, etc. But beyond that, the lack of a universally accepted definition of “brand-safe” leaves perfectly legitimate content sites, often containing curated user-submitted videos, continually needing to justify their brand safety. Unlike display, video does not yet have a meaningful amount of direct response advertisers. We suspect that once CPMs achieve a price point that can allow DR campaigns to scale, the “lack of advertisers” concern will quickly evaporate.

As participants in the online video ecosystem, we must continue to ensure advertisers obtain a high degree of value, users have a positive experience, and publishers receive a fair price for their inventory and through these efforts pre-roll video, already demonstrated as the most effective forms of advertising, will continue to scale.